


Heavy Metal F.A.K.K.s Slash and Burn

by Lycurgus



Category: Heavy Metal (1981), Heavy Metal 2000, Heavy Metal: F.A.K.K.², Slash and Burn (Podcast)
Genre: Angel Steel, Anxiety, Awkward First Times, Awkward Flirting, Bodily Fluids, Crossover Pairings, Crossovers & Fandom Fusions, Democratized Media - Freeform, Deviates From Canon, Dubious Consent, Dubious Ethics, Eventual Smut, Explicit Sexual Content, F/M, First Time, Fluff, Fluff and Smut, Fuck the Canon, Futanari, Humor, Insane Clown Posse - Freeform, Magnitogorsk, Mild Gore, Mock Orange, Other, Post-Canon Fix-It, RPF, Scandroid, Songfic, Space Opera, Stevie Nicks - Freeform, Substance Abuse, Transformative Works, Violence, blue oyster cult - Freeform
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-04-29
Updated: 2017-05-21
Packaged: 2018-10-18 20:48:46
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Major Character Death, Rape/Non-Con
Chapters: 20
Words: 40,298
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/10624875
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Lycurgus/pseuds/Lycurgus
Summary: [Kera and Steve were asking for this]Long gone is the time when Steve thought night terrors were the worst thing that could happen to him. One night, he is forced to learn that things can get a lot worse. An ancient evil has been listening to the podcast, putting the show at a deadly risk ... and everything he holds dear. It's his one way ticket to midnight, but how much sacrifice will Steve be willing to make? And more importantly: what the cock is this shit?"Strap yourselves in, boys..." (and girls)





	1. Fever Dream

"[Slash and Burn is a podcast about fanfiction. It is filled with loud swearing and explicit sexual description. It is not for children, nor the weak of stomach, nor will. Although we attribute to authors as best we can, we have no legal rights to the written works we discuss, nor the characters and universes upon which they are based. We also firmly believe that as long as what you're doing isn't hurting anyone else, whatever you do to get your jellies is all well and good. Join us and have some laughs over the world of fanfic. And seriously, this shit is filthy. You've been warned. Welcome to the magical realm.](https://itunes.apple.com/us/podcast/slash-burn-a-gross-journey-through-fanfiction/id979422858?mt=2)"

* * *

  _There was no message to be found_

_anywhere in sight, inside or out_

_I had looked everywhere_

_But the only lamp left on in the house_

_Was a blue light_

_I was not ready._

* * *

A deep, desperate wheeze suddenly filled a dark bedroom, followed by a twitching body under bed sheets, and a man gasping for breath. The awoken man was Steve, podcaster extraordinaire, and in this moment a wash of cold sweat showered over his skin. He swung his arm, grasping for the bed stand in the dark, fumbling around in search for a light switch.

Vision was critical. He needed to confirm that the thing from his dream had not followed him into his bedroom. Sweat dripping from his brows, he surveyed the room frantically.

It had not.

“Meghan?” he said, “Meghan are you awake, can you—”

His hand went under the sheets next to him, reaching out to touch nothing where he expected to find the comforting warmth of a human body. But there was no one at his side.

Steve looked around the room. He was alone. He meant to check his alarm to get the time, but the numbers were all pixelated, making them impossible to read.

‘ _What the fuck,’_ he thought to himself and swung his feet out of the bed. The cold of the floor started creeping into his legs. He got up, looking for Meghan’s slippers, but learned that they were gone also.

“Meghan?” he tried, walking out into the hallway.

Then the dizziness came over him. How much had he been drinking? How long since he had gone to bed? It might have been only recently. It might have been a little too much drinking. Again.

The light in the kitchen was on. He kept his hands on the walls for guidance as he made his way there, and he expected to find his wife.

But the kitchen was empty, so he looked around for traces of the midnight munchies. It could be a butter knife laying out, or some candy wrappers, or leftover fruit peels. But nothing of the sort told him she had been here.

‘ _Did I leave the lights on?’_ he asked himself.

Then he heard a noise, coming from the bathroom. Someone had just flushed the toilet.

‘ _Okay, that’s okay, we’re good, we’re good here,’_ Steve calmed himself down.

He thought about going back to bed, but it was obvious that he was too upset still from his rough awakening. Steve considered that talking to Meghan made him always feel better, but on the other hand, they both had to get up early in the morning. So it would be better if he let her go back to sleep, and just relaxed a little by himself until he felt like going back to bed also.

So he just got a nice, cold glass of water from the fridge. Part of him wanted to watch television, but chances were he would run across something stupid and just get aggravated. So he decided he wanted to go to his comfy place, the studio in the basement, where he and Kera recorded their podcast.

When he reached the top of the staircase, he suddenly heard the noise of a truck engine outside. A stark flash of bright light came through a window and fell into his house. It was cold, white, and with a blueish tint. The engine spat weird noises that sounded fucked up, but all this died down once the truck had passed by his house. This was a weird hour for a heavy truck to drive through this road, though. Come to think of it, it was funny that any heavy traffic would be seen out here by his house.

‘ _Must be lost,’_ he thought while descending the stairs to the basement. ‘ _Why did Meghan not answer me when I called her name?’_

Downstairs in the podcast studio he was greeted by the creepy cabinets that he loved so much. It amused him that people, especially Kera, used their slasher-movie-smarts to immediately expect that a psycho in a mask would be hiding in there, just waiting to hack into anyone with an axe who was foolish enough to come down here.

They loomed, dark and quiet, in the studio. But they were just a bunch of creepy cabinets.

He sat down in his chair and audibly sipped his water. With deep, slow breaths he tried to calm his heart rate down. His head bent back comfortably, his eyes wandered around the room, calling back memories reminding him how much he loved this place. The four of them who made their outrageous podcast happen twice a month had had so many fun hours down here. And their audience didn’t know half of it, given how much his betrothed editor had to cut from each recording before it was uploaded. There was so much more to their sessions, something much deeper. This content had never reached their ever growing audience of... _Boils and Ghouls_? That one might be his favorite designation for the fans.

Steve looked over to Kera’s funny mike that she called her alien robot. It truly looked like the eye of an evil robot from the future. He stared at it.

There was something wrong with it.

Something was off. Steve stared at the robot eye at Kera’s place intently.

His eyes started to hurt.

The alien mike _oozed._

It shouldn’t do that. His eyes burned. His vision went blurry. When he looked back at the mike, it was like his vision was disturbed— as if static interference crept in on him.

_And the fucking thing dripped._

From upstairs came an audible disturbance. Sounded like a _thud_ , like something hit the wall of the house from the outside.

‘ _Okay, none of this makes any fucking sense,’_ Steve thought, jumping out of his chair, shooting anxious looks around the room, ‘ _What the fuck is going on?’_

He could clearly hear how the front door was being shaken in its frame, as if assaulted from the outside. Practically living out in the woods, Steve was used to the ever present chance of stray bears. But it kept him also aware of the necessity to be able to defend himself.

Steve obviously didn’t keep his firearms down in the podcast studio, so he rushed to fetch a handgun. He checked if it was loaded, switched the safety off, and carefully walked back toward the front door. It shook still. Someone was banging against it from the outside.

‘ _I’d expect a bear to mess with my trash cans, maybe, but I wouldn’t expect it to try and pay me a visit. If you’re some sort of murder hobo trying to break into my house, you’re in for a surprise,’_ Steve thought, taking up position in a save distance from the front door and pointing the muzzle toward the disturbance.

  
 

 


	2. Pushing Overload

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Before Steve could make it back to bed, something decided to fuck with his front door, so he grabbed a gun and went to see who's knockin' and possibly fuck with it back. Also, new tune.

* * *

  _Thight pants and lipstick_

_She's riding on a razor's edge_

_She holds her own against the boys_

_Cuts through the crowd just like a wedge_

* * *

 

The front door sprung out of the frame, slammed inside the house and shattered. The heavy leather boot that had kicked it open landed on the floor with a tremble. Glaring white-bluish light flooded Steve’s home, and engulfed a tall figure standing in the door frame, making this person appear like a black shadow— with the mane of a lion. White smoke was creeping into the hallway around the heavy boots.

“Stand down and hold up your hands!” Steve commanded forcefully, “Or I’ll blow your fucking brains out!”

The black shadow showed Steve two human hands and made a very slow step forward, out of the white glow and under the lamp light in the hallway, so Steve could see her. And she almost made him choke on his own spit.

Broken into his home had a woman so impressive she almost did not fit through the door frame. Her bronze skin was flushed red, shone with sweat, and was smeared with black grime all over. Her long hair was pitch black and wavy, and made her head look triple the size. She had made the entire hallway immediately smell like ozone and hairspray. At her hip, she had fastened a long metal piece with a handle, which looked as if she had torn it straight from an assembly line. She wore high combat boots reinforced with shiny metal caps. They were tucked under some protective leather garments which covered her thick, muscular thighs. Around her hips clung a glossy piece, similar to a black garter belt, and fastened to her thigh protectors with lots of tight, shiny straps. In between those, covering her crotch, was only an aggressively revealing pair of red hot pants, made from a glistening material that looked as if it was moisturized. And her torso was more uncovered than covered by a black leather brassiere with shiny red details, the cups barely enough to cover the nipples of her large breasts. She had pointed her set of piercing brown eyes directly at Steve.

“You puny terrestrial dare threatening me?” she thundered, “Who are you even, and what are you doing here? I came to seek out a man named Steven, the one they call the Scholar.”

Steve grabbed his gun with his other hand to steady his aim, then spoke slowly, “I sure as fuck dare threatening you, Barbarella, this is my fucking house you’ve broken into. And I’ll make fuckin’ sure you’ll be taken to jail for this, or to the crematorium. Your choice.”

She had none of it, keeping her piercing glare on him, “My name is not Barbarella. I’m Julie. And you are not the owner of this sad dwelling. It belongs to Steven, the Scholar, and he lives like a hermit as a devotion to his studies.”

Steve believed he was facing a madwoman, retorting, “Well, A, I liked my house until you decided to fuck it up; B, my name is Steve; and C, I’m not living like a damn hermit, I’m an accountant and married, not necessarily in that order; and finally, D, are you the fuck on crack?” He still pointed the gun at her torso.

The tall woman squinted at him, thinking. Then she tried rubbing her eyes.

“Crossing over must have hurt my eyes again,” she complained, then reached under her thigh protector for what looked like a smartphone. The large screen on this thing emitted a slimy green glow and started humming after she had locked on. Her fingers went swishing over the display, and she kept looking back at Steve.

“Uhm, excuse me?” Steve reminded her that he was till in the room.

“You sort of fit my description here,” she pointed out, “And it can always be that my briefing was faulty, much of it isn’t an exact science.” She started walking in his direction.

“Stay where you are,” Steve threatened and pointed the gun at her head. She ignored him and studied his face.

“You do have the beard alright, but you’re much smaller than my boss said.” She made a face, “You’re also much less attractive than I imagined.”

“Hey, come on!” Steve complained, looking down at himself, standing there in his underwear and t-shirt. “And I told you: stay back!”

But it was too late. She moved so quickly Steve could not even see how. In a flash she had one hand on the muzzle, pointing it away, and another on his arm, forcing a painful, disarming grip on him. Then she had the gun.

He tumbled back a few paces, breaking out in cold sweat, his heart pounding. He meant to scream but all he could produce was a panicked, disturbing grunt.

“Relax,” Julie said, holding the weapon at the muzzle, “I’m not here to hurt anyone. Just tell me where the Scholar is.”

“I don’t know what you’re talking about! I am Steve!” he managed to yell out.

“So you’re the one who does the Slash and Burn?”

Steve blinked, “That’s the name of the podcast I do with my friend Kera. So I’m not the only one responsible. Did we discuss one of your stories and offended you, and now you wanna get back at me? Because I’m gonna tell you in all honesty, I’m about to shit my fucking underpants, well done.”

She made a face again, “Ew, what kind of talk is that? Listen, my boss, or the people she works for rather, are doing deep scans of space, and they pick up all kinds of signals out there. And we picked up the Slash and Burn, and we have studied the work of the one Scholar they call the Lovable Noob, and we are impressed with his vast knowledge and staggering competency. And we thought he can help us—”

“But that’s what I call myself!” he exclaimed, “I am Steve, the lovable noob!”

She gave him an offended look and raised an eyebrow, “I wasn’t finished. Is that what you do, rudely interrupting people?”

He paused, “Really now?”

“Any—hoo,” she continued, playing with Steve’s gun, “For a lovable noob you’re a little on the pudgy side, aren’t you now?”

“Oh that’s real nice,” Steve got annoyed, “Let’s cut the crap, okay? Who are you working for, and who’s doing what scans of space.”

Julie tucked Steve’s gun away and placed her hands on her hips, shaking some rogue streaks of hair out of her face, “Alright, here’s the deal. I’m from a place called Eden. Got wiped out a while back now. Your home planet exists in an alternate universe to Eden, and our scans brought to our attention your vast knowledge about the Slash and Burn. So we listened to all your teachings, searching for answers, but then you went silent for some reason. Since we think you can help us fight a great evil called the Loc-Nar, I was sent to cross over to this place and seek you out.”

Steve’s mind was racing, “Alternate universe? You crossed over? Why are you using this kind of language?”

His head was starting to hurt again. He tried focusing his view on Julie, but his vision started to pixelate in the corner of his eyes.

“Woa, woa!” Julie rushed to him and gripped him firmly by the shoulders, “What is going on? I almost lost you there!”

Steve had trouble standing up, “I don’t know anymore. I haven’t been feeling so well,” he sighed, “And I sure as hell don’t know what any of this fucking crap is. Oh gosh don’t let this be one of my fucked up dreams, please no.”

“You suffer from night terrors?” she asked, trying to make eye contact.

“I do. But that’s not the point, crossover lady," he tried, “What do you want from me?”

She raised her hand in a waiving gesture, “My boss is hoping that you have the cannon which can destroy the Loc-Nar, or can help us with locating it.”

“You’re holding one of my firearms right there,” Steve said, “I’ve got bigger, but I can’t help you with cannons. I can however refer you to some museums about colonial history, if that’s what you’re looking for?”

“No, I don’t think so. You don’t get what I mean, it’s more like a system. Here, wait,” she took out her smart device again and started swishing around on it.

Steve stared off into nothingness. He was thinking about all the terms he had learned.

“Hang on a minute. So you’re telling me that your presence here represents a crossover—”

“Correct,” Julie said, focused on her device.

“But you also said Earth represents an AU to your home world. That doesn’t make any fuckin’ sense, though.”

“Why?”

“Because you’re here, so crossover fic checks out, but what makes this an AU?”

Then a shower of ice ran down his back. His eyes opened wide, and he laid a hard stare on Julie.

“Fuck!” he yelled, “Fuck, no!”

“What’s gotten into you now?” Julie asked, irritated.

“If you tell me that your damn crossover turned my life into an AU in which my wife never existed, I swear to god,” Steve said between clenched teeth, pointing a finger at Julie’s face.

“Your wife?” she asked, swishing over her device, then flipping the screen over to him, “You mean her?”

Steve was looking at a picture of Meghan. It was the same one he kept in his wallet.

“Yea, that’s her, that’s Meghan,” he said slowly.

“No, we know of her. She should be with you,” Julie said, looking back at the screen, but then she suddenly froze and stared at Steve, “Wait, is she not?”

“She was when I went to bed!” Steve said desperately, “But when I woke up, and I saw fuckin’ white lights outside, and all this fuckin’ crap started, I couldn’t find her anymore.”

“Fuck. Me,” Julie said, tucking her device behind the thigh protector and putting a hand to her hip where she kept the long metal contraption.

“What is it? Is she okay? What do you know?”

“Shut up Steve,” Julie said quietly, “Listen.”

They held their breath for a moment.

There was movement in the house.

It sounded like feet moving across the floor. Very slowly. The noises came from the door in Steve’s back.

Then they heard someone speak, groggy and annoyed, “Steve, why are you up? What’s with all the noise? Are you okay?”

Steve smiled, having recognized his wife’s voice, and he looked at Julie relieved.

But Julie’s eyes were staring past him, fixated on the door behind him.

“Don’t move,” she whispered, “I heard it too.”

 


	3. Displaced

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Meghan is finally found, and calling for Steve, but Julie doesn't want to let him get to her.

“What is with you? That’s Meghan,” Steve insisted.

Julie just raised a single finger to her lips, ordering him to stop talking, and very slowly shook her head at him. Her hand grabbed the handle of the metal rod, and detached it from her hip.

The door behind Steve opened just a little bit. The room behind was dark.

“Steve, can you come in here?” Meghan asked in a pleading voice, “I’m scared.”

Steve looked in confusion at the door and back to Julie, who bit her lower lip and kept shaking her head. Then she pressed a button on the handle, and a hundred little, razor sharp teeth jumped out along the sides of the rod, like a chainsaw.

“Ask her to come out,” Julie whispered.

“H-honey?” Steve began, “Can you join me over here? There’s someone here I want you to meet.”

“No!” Meghan complained, “Steve, I need your help, please come here now! I’m stuck and it hurts, please help me!”

“That’s it, I have to go and help her,” Steve said, suddenly making a quick pace toward the door.

He was halfway there when the door broke into pieces, right through the middle, and in a cloud of wooden dust something dashed into the hallway, coming for him.

“Steve, no!” Julie cried, reached for his arm, and yanked him backwards.

Through the door came a walking torso with no head and a long scythe for an arm. The thing was all black and looked armored, and the steel scythe shot upward and cut the air in front of Steve’s nose tip. It shredded into the wall right next to him, cutting a hole large enough to see the room behind. With a deafening, metallic shriek the monstrosity ripped the scythe free to make another dash for Steve.

He was torn through the air by Julie’s force and flew backward, behind her. The attacker noticed and raised its other arm, which looked like a thick silver pipe, and aimed it at Steve, who had landed painfully on his arse.

Julie dashed between the two, swinging her long metal contraption over her head, the sharp metal teeth racing into a vicious flurry, producing sharp rusty and crackling noise.

But the attacker had found its aim, and with a roar the silver pipe spit a black mass at Steve, hurling through the air and hitting the wall over his head with a moist splatter.

Julie let out a long, deep scream and hacked her razor sword into the torso, slashing it right through the middle. The room filled up with deafening, screeching metallic noise and a cloud of a million fiery sparks in red and green.

She didn’t stop hacking away at the thing until she had cut off every limb and lacerated it into pieces. Then she straightened up, panting, and turned around, looking for Steve.

He still sat on his ass, next to his destroyed front door, staring at the smoldering pile of trash metal in front of Julie.

“You okay?” she asked.

“Fuck! No, I’m not okay! What the fuck was that?” he yelled.

“Displacer,” she panted.

“The whasowha??” Steve yelped.

“It’s a displacer unit. Was a trap. Tried to slice you up, Steve.”

“But why??”

“Many peoples are corrupted by the Loc-Nar, Steve. Many people don’t want you to help me find a way to destroy it,” she reattached her razor sword back where it belonged.

“You mean they sent a fuckin’ terminator after me?” Steve cried, waving his arms around, spittle flying everywhere.

“No,” Julie explained, “A terminator travels through time, a displacer jumps into your place.”

Steve got back to his feet, “I have to find my wife.”

“No use,” Julie said.

“Why? Don’t you tell me—” he raised his index finger at her.

“I’m not. But a Displacer cannot appear out of thin air, do you understand? It has to switch places with something. Well, someone.”

“Are you saying this thing took my wife?”

“I’m saying it traded places with your wife”, she clarified.

“Then how can I find her?”, Steve demanded.

“Normally I would say it’s impossible to guess, but since you were the target, I think it’s safe to assume that she is close to whomever wants to see you dead back in my universe.”

“Oh great. That limits my choices a bunch,” Steve said sarcastically.

“Actually, it does. And it works out nicely for me and my boss.”

“Why?” he demanded.

“Because if you help me locate the cannon which can kill the Loc-Nar, we can also try and find your wife, since she is close to whomever wants to destroy the weapon.”

“And how do I know you’re not lying to me?” Steve demanded.

She gave him a look and let his question hang in the air. Then she turned and faced him, and came over to join him. Julie placed her hands flat on his chest, as if to feel if his body was warm.

“You don’t know that, Steve,” she said quietly, “You’ll simply have to believe me. And trust me.”

He had to raise his chin to look up at her face and into her large brown eyes. Her head was framed with the large black mane of wavy hair. She was looking at him softly, but behind that her expression was very sincere, and cold. Something echoed in Julie’s gaze, some very old pain that had never stopped burning in the background. She had the determination of a crusader. And she smelled like rust and leather and sweat.

“I have misjudged you at first,” she said gently, “I can feel that you are very passionate about those who are dear to you. That’s admirable. One does not understand from a passing glance that you are a passionate person, but you really are. And you are happy to share this with people you trust, isn’t that right, Steve?”

She had raised a hand to his face and touched his temple. Her hand was almost as long as his head.

“Admirable is a generous word,” he said somberly, “Except that I’ve gotten my wife kidnapped across the galaxy.”

“All too quick to assign the blame to yourself there. But we may be able to fix that soon,” he looked at her puzzled while she ran her hand down to gently touch his neck. But as she felt around the back of his neck her expression changed to worried.

“What’s this?” she said, examining him, “Shit. Some of the black junk has gotten on you.”

“Is that bad?”

“What do you think? That displacer was here to make sure you croak. But you’re lucky I found you, because I can help you.”

Julie reached into her other thigh protector and pulled a long metal tube out. She attached it to her flat screen and put in some commands, after which the tube released some pressure and filled with a couple ounces of green slime.

“Let me see your tongue,” she asked.

Just as Steve had opened his mouth she pushed the tube in and sprayed the content at the back of his throat, inducing his swallowing reflex.

“Oh gawd,” Steve coughed, “Did you have to spray it directly into my mouth?”

“No,” she admitted, “Any bodily orifice would have been fine.”

“In that case, thank you,” he said, “So will I be okay now?”

She gave him a thin smile, “Sure.”

While she was tucking away her equipment, Steve looked around the shambles of his only recently bought house.

“Well,” he sighed, “I sure as hell don’t have any reason to hang around this place any longer. Just tell me how I can help you so we can rescue my wife, please.”

Julie studied his face for a moment, “So you don’t consciously know of the cannon that can kill the Loc-Nar?”

“Sure as hell didn’t come up on the podcast,” Steve shrugged.

“I was worried this could be a possibility,” she admitted, “But I have a contact we can seek out in this case. He’ll know what to do if I present to him the lovable noob.”

Steve cringed a little, “Please don’t call me that.”

“This will require of course,” she explained, “That you do the crossover with me and return back to my universe.”

“How do we go about that?”

“Well, we can use my ship.”

“Sure. Then let’s do it,” Steve said stoically.

“I don’t think you understand yet, Steve.”

“Why?”

“You won’t be able to come back to this place.”

 

 

 


	4. Enhanced

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Steve is forced to make a decision between his life and his wife.

“What?” Steve said incredulously, “You made it here too, how hard can it be?”

“It’s not as easy as you might think. A crossover device is a very rare piece of technology. It was a bitch to obtain one in the first place, and it wasn’t exactly legal either. We managed to do it because we had a good reason, and a lot of people backing us who want to see the Loc-Nar destroyed. But—”, she sighed, “I’m afraid people won’t be willing to go through all that just to give you and Meghan a trip home.”

Steve frowned. Julie saw him tightening his jaw, as he looked around the destroyed hallway in his new house, thinking.

He couldn’t let anyone know why he needed to go away. Nobody would believe this story, and people would probably just assume that he was mocking them one last time before disappearing for good. This would mean that he’d never see his parents again, or anyone from his family. And he could not tell Kera about what happened. They’d been so close for so long, and Steve was sure she’d never forgive him for vanishing without a trace.

He’d also never get to see her baby grow up. He’d never hear her child say ‘uncle Steve’. And Slash & Burn— it would just die. He’d have to leave everything behind, and even if he’d survive all this, he’d still have lost his life, in a sense.

But they had Meghan.

He looked back at Julie, “Let’s do this shit,” he said with a vengeance.

Julie had watched him this whole time, and now the widest smile appeared on her face.

“I knew you’d come,” she said, “I just had to let you know up front. But I knew you were gonna pick up the fight. You truly are the lovable noob.”

“I said—”, he began.

“I heard you, but I can’t help it,” she chuckled, “Follow me outside.”

She led him to the front yard, which was flooded in the now familiar cold, whiteish-blue light. As Steve looked around, he noticed that the ground was charred and looked more like a battlefield than anything else. The vegetation was largely destroyed, either uprooted or severely singed from some unknown fire. It looked like one big mess, and his trash cans were molten into a smoldering heap as well.

“Shit,” he yelled, “What the hell happened here?”

Julie gave him an irritated look, “Did you not see my ship?”, she said, pointing.

Steve looked at the huge metal thing that had destroyed his front yard. It looked like a giant robot vulture and a huge metal wasp had a baby together, and the result was this thing. It generally had a triangular shape, with large wings in the back and a big compartment in the front with a transparent roof. The roof was open, and Steve guessed this was were the pilot was supposed to sit. The whole thing was colored in shades of brown and green, with the exception of a bunch of shiny, chrome covered metal lances which were attached to the wings in the back. Otherwise, the thing was covered in the same kind of black grime that Julie was covered with. The lights Steve had seen earlier were coming from the headlights Julie had turned towards the hole where his front door used to be. As Steve walked closer, he could hear the ship make metallic noises, like a hot engine right after being switched off. This probably was also the source of the ozone smell, which was really pungent out here.

“Do you like it?” Julie asked.

“It’s pretty cool,” he attested while examining it, “I can only see one seat in there, though. Do you want me to ride in your trunk?”

Julie smiled, “Something like that. But space is the smaller problem. The bigger one is that you’re a puny terrestrial, Steve.”

“Thanks again for that,” he said sarcastically, “What the hell are you saying?”

Julie walked over to the open part of her ship and was rummaging around between a myriad of levers, control consoles, and readout devices until she pulled something out that looked like a mean type of staple gun.

“The problem is,” Julie explained, “That the cross over process is extremely traumatizing both physically and psychologically,” she raised the staple gun into the air and came walking towards Steve, “While my ship can protect you from the physical aspect, your feeble human mind won’t be able to handle the—,” and she loaded the front of the gun with a long, silvery object, “stress, I guess?”

Steve had to raise his chin again to look at her.

“What do you suggest, then?”, he asked.

“I suggest enhancing you, Steve,” she smirked.

“How?”

“I can inject into you an artificial intelligence that will help your brain cope with the strenuous process of crossing over.”

“Will it hurt?” he asked, staring at her gun.

“You won’t remember any of it,” Julie said, and popped the silvery shell of the projectile off to reveal a slivering, green, slimy tentacle inside, dripping with goop.

“Oh my gawd!” Steve yelled, “What is that shit?!”

“It’s a bio-neural interface, Steve,” Julie explained, grabbing him firmly around the neck to hold him still, “Try to relax some, okay?”

“Oh shit what are you doing? I didn’t agree to this!” he kept yelling as Julie raised the gun to his temple, while holding him as still as she could, and while the gun started producing a sharp, high pitched sound.

“Consider it dub-con,” Julie said.

Something like the smash from a hammer hit Steve in the temple, and he fell into an unconscious darkness.

 

 


	5. Discharged

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Steve needs to go with Julie, and he also needs help to do the crossover with her, so I guess he kinda consented to being shot in the brain with a slimy tentacle?

 

Steve blinked, and he was back in the darkness. But there where white spots. His entire vision turned out to be large pixels. He heard a voice groan in the dark. Then he realized it was him groaning.

The pixels became smaller, and the resolution increased. A shot of electricity went through his brain nerves and down through his body, followed by a thick rush of adrenaline, and he felt alive!

His vision cleared into a sharp resolution, clearer than ever before, and revealed that he lay on his back in the damp grass in his yard, and stared up into the dark blue sky. The stars were still out, but he could see some burning orange on the eastern horizon in the corner of his eye.

Steve sat up with another groan.

“Oh, look who’s back!” Julie chimed, “How are we feeling?”

“Uuugh,” Steve moaned, “I feel like... like—”

“Yes?” she smirked.

“I feel pretty damn amazing,” he said incredulously.

“Uh-huh. And?”

“I can’t say when I last felt this good,” Steve laughed, “I think I am...”

“Yes?”

“I’m calm,” he realized.

“Yea. Pretty sweet, huh?”

“Yea!” Steve yelled, jumping to his feet, “I feel like I could take on the whole god-damn world, Julie!”

She just laughed. Steve saw now that she was sitting in the pilot’s seat in her ship, messing with the control consoles.

“What happened to me, Julie?”

“Well, the interface I injected you with merged your mind with an assisting artificial intelligence which enhances your mental capabilities, and, shall we say, stabilized it and straightened it out. You shouldn’t experience any night terrors from now on.”

“Fuck, are you for real?”, Steve laughed.

She looked confused, “Uh, yea, I am.”

“Shit, this feels amazing. How does this work?”

“Well, it’s complicated, but do you know how the OS on your computer gets all fucked up over time and you need to make a clean install again eventually?” she explained.

“Yea.”

“Well, this thing pretty much creates a crash dump of your mind and then shuts your brain down. Then it cleans out all the garbage that has bulked up the ‘registry’ of your mind throughout your entire life and defragments your personality. Oh, and it removes any malware your brain might have picked up at some point.”

Steve noticed that a sizable chunk of his knowledge and memories about pornography were missing.

Julie finished and shrugged, “Then it simply reboots your personality.”

“This is so cool!” Steve gushed.

“That’s not all. Blink twice, quickly.”

He did, and his eyeballs twitched as something glazed over them and his vision turned green, while all the contrasts got enhanced.

“Whoa!” Steve yelped, “The fuck is this?”

Julie grinned, “Info skin. Pretty nifty, huh?”

“How do I use it?”

“Just try focusing on something,” she said.

Steve focused on the shape of Julie’s body as she sat in her pilot’s seat. Then, a white outline surrounded her frame and a red scanning line went over her.

“Cool!” Steve gushed.

All of a sudden, a flood of information started appearing in his vision.

 

Name: Julie Strain

Species: _unknown._

Ethnicity: Tarrakian.

Approx. Age: 55 yrs (Earth).

Approx. height: 6.5 ft.

Approx. weight: 165.3 lbs.

Marital status: **SINGLE**.

Cup size: **41 D**.

Approx. arousal level: **MID-LOW**.

 

“Fuck, this is awesome!” Steve admitted, “But why does it give me your level of arousal?”

Julie drew her eyebrows together and glared at him, “Uhm, the info skin is tapping into your subconscious to filter through all the available information and only presents to you whatever holds the biggest interest value to you at the time. _Steve_.”

“Oh. Heh. Oops, I guess?” he blinked once and the info skin retreated behind his eyeballs again, “Also says you’re 55. You don’t look 55 to me?”

“I’m not from around here, Steve,” she said matter-of-factly, “just don’t assume, okay? It's just not very nice.”

“Alright, sorry.”

She slammed her hands flat on the console in front of her.

“Sheesh, I’m feeling spent right now. I think we better discharge before we take off,” she said, throwing her long hair back and rubbing her temples.

“Dis-charge?” Steve questioned.

“Uh-huh. The interface we both have now needs to discharge periodically to keep running. That’s what I had in mind also when I injected you with the tentacle. So I can have someone to discharge with. Let’s just do it so we can take off.”

“Do—what?” Steve asked, puzzled.

“Fuck. Let’s fuck,” she said bluntly, “Take your clothes off.”

“Wait, what? I— I can’t do that!” Steve yelled.

Julie didn’t reply, instead blinked twice rapidly to draw down the green info skin over her eyes. She looked Steve up and down and gave him a wide smirk. She blinked once, and her eyes went brown again.

“Yes you can,” she said in a cheeky voice.

“Oh my gosh, fuck this, I mean I _won’t_ have sex with you, Julie,” Steve struggled.

“But why not?”, she said, annoyed.

“I’m married, remember? That’s why we’re doing all of this?”

“Ugh, Steve, it’s just sex, okay? It’ll make us both feel better, that’s all,” she said as if she had to convince a child to get into the tub.

“No Julie, out of the question, I won’t do it,” Steve said firmly.

“Fine,” she said in a grouchy voice, “Have it your way. I guess I can keep it up until we’re back in my universe and find someone else to pleasure me, if you’re not up to the task. But don’t expect your tentacle brain to run flawless if you refuse to discharge, okay, Steve? You’ve been warned.”

“Understood,” Steve said.

She made a face, “Alright then, I’m all set I guess. Let’s go.”

“Er, where do I sit?” Steve asked, confused.

“Just hop in.”

“There’s only one seat, Julie. There’s no room for me,” Steve insisted.

“Yes there is,” she said, scooting back on her chair just a little.

“Julie,” Steve sighed, slumping his shoulders in desperation.

“Don’t worry, chaste boy, I’m not gonna start anything. Sheesh. No means no, I get it.”

“Alright, then how do I get—”

Steve approached her and Julie had to get up some and help him inside, dragging his limps into the right places so he had at least a little room. When she was done, she had stuck Steve tightly in between the U-shaped steering wheel and the softness of her large, heaving bosoms. Steve could feel how her nipples poked two holes in his back, along with the firm pulse of her heartbeat. The rest of his body was clenched between her thick, muscular thighs and arms. All around him he could feel the heat from her toned body, and her breath in his neck.

“Sorry my cockpit is a little cramped,” she said, hitting a button, which made the glass dome over them seal the compartment off with a metallic sizzling sound.

“Ew, don’t call it that,” Steve complained.

“What, you got a problem with my _cramped cockpit_ , Steve?” she laughed.

“What have I gotten myself into?” Steve sighed.

“Hold on now,” she said, reaching down in front, between Steve’s legs, pressing her arm on and past his crotch, “The ignition is down here—”

She pulled some latch backward. Her spaceship started an electrical hum, and rocked back and forth like a roller coaster car jumping into motion, while the screens around Steve flickered and beeped erratically.

Julie embraced him from behind to get her hands on the steering wheel. He started to feel oncoming nausea and nervousness, but it gradually went away and was replaced with confidence and slight excitement. The tentacle brain was correcting his senses. Meanwhile, the ship hovered up into the air, way above Steve’s house.

“Steve?” Julie said in a challenging tone as she steered her space ship into the orange of the beginning sunrise, “I know you’ve got a raging hard on. I felt it.”

“Oh for fucks’ sake,” he said.

“And I just want you to know that I’m real pissed that you won’t let me have it!”

And with that, she drew her steering wheel backwards, racing her ship into a steep incline, and multiple huge engines somewhere behind them set off, blasting them up through the Earth’s atmosphere.

[Cue a montage of Steve clenched between [Major Boobage](http://1.images.southparkstudios.com/blogs/southparkstudios.com/files/2014/07/1203-cheesing-brains2.jpg), flying into the sunset, doing the crossover with Julie. Background noise is below.]

 

 


	6. Grim Dark

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> New universe, new traveling mate, new challenges, old Steve.

Somewhere out in space, the grim darkness of the far future lit up with sudden bursts of blue light flashes, rapidly increasing in speed. At a distinct point, the universe pulled together and clenched up into a sphincter, and shot forth through the blue lightning flashes a wedge-shaped, brown and green, single pilot spaceship, tumbling at an unsteady course, and trailing behind it were spontaneously formed, goopy, pulsing bubbles of deep blue plasma that drew an elongated fartline into the empty cold of space.

When space itself had snapped back into place, the bumbling spaceship released a slick, chrome covered suppository from its rear before the bulky jets in the back burst out violet, blazing glows, pushing the ship away and leaving the suppository way behind, after which it exploded, igniting the goopy plasma bubbles along with it, leaving just a burning trail of fiery orange, and black metal dust in its wake.

“There goes the crossover device,” Julie said, steadying the course of her ship while she and Steve looked at one of the many screens in her cockpit showing the searing glow behind them. “Welcome home, Steve.”

“Thanks,” Steve confirmed, who was wedged between the slow heave of Julie’s ample bosoms and her sweltering, muscular limbs. He tried not to sound too somber, just neutral.

He was not doing the best job, so Julie said, “You’ll get used to my universe, don’t worry. People assimilate quickly here. If they survive their first week.”

“Oh, that’s reassuring,” he conceded, now fighting to contain his sarcasm, “Can I take this out now? It feels a little weird still.”

Steve referred to the two inch long metal plug Julie had stuck into the side of his head. The bioneural interface Julie had blasted into his brain had created a clean, neat little port hole in his skull where she could connect her ship. This helped Steve’s new tentacle brain with adjusting to the turbulence that came with physically entering an alternate universe.

“No,” Julie said, “You gotta leave it in. You might not notice, but your mind still needs smoothing out. The crossover forces physical trauma on your body, and leaving your brain deal with that on its own would send you instantly into shock.”

“Okay. But do we have to keep listening to your playlist?”

“What’s wrong with it? I thought you might like it,” Julie said, a little self-conscious.

“Alright, it’s fine I guess. I just― I mean this is― Never mind.”

“You okay?” she asked, a little worried about him.

“Yea, sure. Listen, I’ve been thinking.”

“Yes? You can tell me aa-nything,” she said, squeezing him playfully between her bicepses and boobs.

“Hey, be serious, okay? I’ve been thinking about all this, and it’s a little cheap, isn’t it?”

“What is cheap?” she asked.

“The premise. I mean, with this Loc-Nar abducting my wife. Isn’t that way cheesy? I mean, it’s classic damseling, isn’t it?” he paused before reiterating his point, “I mean, there is this great and ancient evil in the universe, and it really has nothing better to do than picking on women?”

Julie thought about this for a moment. “Well, sometimes it corrupts entire civilizations.”

“ _Sometimes_ ,” Steve repeated.

“Yea. Well, have you ever actually seen the original movie?”

“I can’t seem to remember right now,” he admitted.

“It’s all it does, like, in almost every plot line, it’s gotta grab a lady first before it can go on curruptin’,” Julie sighed.

“Yea,” Steve said, thinking, “Wait a minute― how do _you_ know about your own movie?”

“I’m not in that one,” she corrected him.

“Oh?” he kept thinking about this, “But how can you know about them? I mean, they’re from _my_ universe, right? How can you―”

“I've got Netflix,” she said in a plain voice.

“Netflix? But how can you―” Steve probed on.

“Steve, don’t do this,” Julie interrupted.

“Do what?”

“Pick my universe apart. We’re not doing a podcast right now. We’re hurrying to meet up with my contact to find a weapon to destroy a force that threatens to corrupt our very existence. If you’re trying to poke too many holes into our mission, you might not like what you find. I told you: _just trust me_.”

“Okay then,” he said, sounding disconcerted.

“I mean,” she sighed, struggling, “ _Please_.”

“What?”

“ _Please_ just give me your trust. I’m sorry, I’m not minding enough how hard this must be on you right now,” she slowly drew in her breath, “Meghan will be safe. I promise.”

“Do you?” he said carefully.

“Yes.” She paused a beat to give relevance to her promise. Then she explained, “I know what it’s like. Fearing for someone.”

“You do?”

“Yes. When the Loc-Nar destroyed my home, I lost most people I’d been cherishing for as long as I could remember, including my father. I thought I’d lost my sister as well, for a while.”

“Wow,” Steve said quietly.

“If she’s alive, we’ll get your wife back.”

“That’s comforting,” Steve murmured, realizing she had given him the best of all scenarios, “So, what did you do before your home was destroyed?”

“I was looking forward to working with my father in the colony. He was a public administrator with the colonial council and oversaw the entire farming output on Eden. I had just gotten my Master’s in Agricultural Biology and was preparing to join his staff. We were supposed to meet up, minutes before everyone was killed.”

“I’m sorry,” Steve said.

“Thank you, but all that was a long time ago. Oh, I was also on the wrestling team in high school.”

“Hey, me too,” Steve said perkily.

“I know.”

“Right. So why are you doing all this mercenary stuff now?”

Julie took a deep breath, “Well, my mom was in security before she met my dad. Big stuff. She’d been freshly promoted to colonel when they were first dating. He was kind of a hippie back then, all that colony business, starting fresh, off the grid, and all that shit. They were both young, and had felt an immediate connection with one another. When my father was finally granted the funds for the Eden colony, he asked her to come with him. And she did. Gave up her old job and became a security organizer for Eden. And had Kerrie and me.”

“And― is she―”

“No, she isn’t dead. She was off-world when we were attacked. So after the colony was destroyed she went back into security and started a mercenary company,” she audibly spoke with a clenched jaw now, “She’s my _boss,_ Steve.”

“What’s the matter?” Steve chuckled.

“Ugh, it’s kind of a touchy subject, talking about work. My mom’s kind of a hard-ass, y’know?”

“What?” Steve laughed, “Your _mom_ is the hard-ass?”

“What’s so damn funny, Earth-boy?” she said, annoyed.

A round screen to Steve’s right lit up, showing outer space. There was a shiny, moving dot out there.

Julie quickly hit a button, increasing the resolution. The shiny orb started to look like Kera’s alien microphone.

Steve’s head hurt, as a shot of electricity ran through the plug in his head into his brain, causing a headache and his vision to be blurred with static. He looked back at the screen. The dot was different. It looked like a small moon.

Julie went, “Huh,” and switched the screen off.

“Everything okay?”

“Yea,” she said.

“So why did you not go back to farming, or whatever?”

“Are you kidding? There’s no jobs anywhere in the galaxy, Steve.”

He let out an incredulous, high pitched yelp, “What?!”

“Yea, everybody is being replaced by androids. I mean, I guess we could probably do something about it if people would stop voting See-Noo into office for _once_.”

“Wait, See-Noo is real?”

“Oh, you better believe it, Steve.”

“Well, I guess politics ain’t a walk in the park in your universe either, huh? Just like where I’m from.”

“Hang on, it’s nowhere near _that_ bad, Steve,” she insisted decidedly.

“What?” Steve yelped again, “How can the Galactic Emperor possibly be any worse―”

“Uhm, where do I start?”, Julie interjected passionately, “One: hands. Two: hair. Three: fucking tape on the tie? Come _the fuck_ on! Even See-Noo learned how to tie a knot at some point!”

At this moment a sterile, metallic noise echoed in the small cockpit, and the round screen to Steve’s right lit up once again. What it showed was not a small moon. It was a blue metal sphere. The upper hemisphere had two small, green glowing bulges which looked almost like eyes. The lower half looked as if most of it had been cut out and replaced by pink glass, through which a spider web of black lines was frantically pulsing. It looked like the neon cyborg version of a laughing emoticon.

“Shit,” Julie said, switching the alarm off.

“What?”

“That thing has lined up with our course. It increased speed just now.”

“Should I be worried? I mean, it looks ridiculous, how bad can it be?”

In this moment, the entire cockpit was bathed in a blinding glow of neon pink light. The flicker of black spider webs did a frenzied dance on every console, every screen. Steve turned his head around as much as he could to look behind himself, through the transparent dome out into space.

Above and behind them, the massive sphere was upon them, looming gigantically, and emanating an alien hum that made the entirety of Julie’s ship vibrate. The small, naked plastic troll with red hair that hung from the cockpit dome was jumping around as if it was panicking, too.

“Oh, fuck no,” Steve said in a low voice, his eyes widening.

“Fuck no indeed,” Julie said, pushing a lever to her right into a higher position, and slamming a different one to her left forward, as the small ship increased speed under the roar of the massive jet engines behind the two.

For a moment, the pink glow waned, but then it increased again to a blinding level.

“Shit, they’re matching our speed,” Julie said angrily.

“Computer, evasive maneuvers!” Steve blurted.

A cute chime was played in the tiny cockpit, and then a disembodied voice said, “I’m sorry, Steve. I do not understand,” and then it repeated Steve’s voice, “ _Computer, evasive maneuvers!_ ”

“Really?” Steve sighed.

“What do you think this is, Steve? We’re in outer space, they’re just going to match our every move. We can’t do anything if we can’t outrun them,” Julie said.

For the first time since the crossover, Steve got really worried as he suddenly felt how, through the bare flesh of Julie’s supple breasts, pulsating against his worn-thin t-shirt, her heart rate was increasing to an alarming speed. Then, a different screen above them lit up, emanating a screeching alarm. It just read:

_WARNING_

_TRANSIENT ELECTROMAGNETIC DISTURBANCE_

_DETECTED_

“Fuck,” Julie breathed deeply, “They’ve got an―”

Right then, a crushing noise echoed through the small ship, sounding like a gigantic microwave had been switched on. The noise cut out right away, but all the screens and buttons in the cockpit instantly went black, and the massive rocket engines in the back died. The ship slowly drifted to a halt, only the light from the stars illuminating the frame of the travelers' shadows in the cockpit.

“―electromagnetic pulse field locked on us,” Julie finished.

“Julie?” Steve asked quietly.

“Yea?”

“Why did we hear a noise? There’s no medium in outer space for weapon sounds to travel through, you know.”

“Steve, I swear to gawd―” Julie growled through clenched teeth as the deep hum from the smiley ship made the cockpit shake once more, and they were blinded by the pink neon shine from the gigantic emoticon creeping ever closer to their position.

* * *

 


	7. Deep Shaft

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> CAUTION!
> 
> This chapter comes with:
> 
> TRIGGER WARNING: rape / non-con  
> TRIGGER WARNING: dubious ethics
> 
> Otherwise, enjoy a long, dark, cold shaft, you guys.

The transparent dome over the cockpit made a hissing noise of decompression as it slowly opened to let first Steve and then Julie get out of the ship. Julie’s boots clanked heavily on the icy metal floor in the derelict hangar bay, while Steve’s bare feet produced merely a shy pitter-patter on the grimy surface.

Their ship had come to a rest on a platform inside a massive, dark shaft. It was barely wide enough for the vessel, and lacked any railing. Walking closer to the edge, Steve crossed his arms and shivered as he looked downward into a black abyss, from where a cold draft went upward through the shaft. He turned his head up, and saw yet another gaping abyss looming over them.

Around the walls of the shaft were other platforms. Very few of them had other spaceships, or what might have been spaceships, on them. The vessels were just as dark as Julie’s lay now, lifeless and defunct, all of their computer circuits fried.

Behind Steve, where the platform was mounted on the wall, was a single, closed hatch. Along the wall, endlessly upward and downward, ran an illuminated pipe, glowing with sterile, blue light. It was their only, very feeble, light source.

Julie walked around her ship to open a compartment at the side, “Well, crap,” she murmured, “Steve, can you be a doll and check how we can get through that hatch?” She rummaged through the compartment, tossing out some heavy looking guns and rifles, and picking up a set of gray clothes from the bottom of the box.

Steve walked over to the door to examine it. It had the same blue metal surface like the rest of the ship they were trapped in. All he could make out were two firmly shut halves of a hatch door, which would not budge, no matter how he pulled or pushed. There were no buttons, no handles, no consoles anywhere on or near it.

“Honestly, I’ve got no fuckin’ clue how, Julie,” he announced while walking back over to the pile of weapons that she had assembled on the floor.

“Figures,” she sighed, “Controls must be on the other side then. We should get changed in the meantime, you can’t― What are you doing, Steve?”

He had picked up a large handgun and was looking through the sights at the hatch door. His entire forearm had to get wedged inside just to get a hold of the trigger. It was quite heavy for just a handgun, so he had to steady it with his other hand.

“I’m trying this baby on for size, if you don’t mind. Shouldn’t we get ready to defend ourselves?”

“Steve, put it down, it won’t―”

“Hey, I’m able to handle a firearm, remember? Back home I used to―”

Suddenly they could hear heavy steps outside the shaft, making them exchange alarmed looks. The steps seemed to be approaching. Then, they heard electronic beeps on the other side, and the half doors produced a sharp whooshing noise as they slowly dragged apart.

The thing on the other side had to bow down to see through the hatch doors. A set of yellow lizard eyes was glowing in the dark of the hallway behind. Julie dropped the clothes she held and walked over to Steve, positioning herself in front of him.

“Try to stay behind me, okay?” she whispered.

The creature on the other side growled, its eyes leering around until they had found the two of them on the platform. Then, it forced two massive, dark green hands with four fingers and sharp nails inside, wedging the hatch doors apart roughly.

“My my,” the creature growled in a grave voice, “Look what we caught ourselves this time.”

The creature had to bow down and squeeze its large body through the hatch to get on the platform, which produced an aching noise under the additional weight. The thing was walking on two chunky legs, its knees bent, and wielded two fat arms. Its upper half was covered in a half-torn wife beater that extended way down and covered its abdomen and crotch, too, like a filthy tunic. It had the ugly face of a moray eel, but with the glowing predatory eyes in the front, and a set of sharp teeth behind which a blue, slimy tongue was hiding. At the top sides of the head, two antennae or ears protruded outward like tiny funnels.

“Oh my,” moray face growled, “Hank, come in here, and have a look at this beauty!”

There was one more person out in the hallway behind him. Julie and Steve could hear goopy noises, moist splatter, and slimy slippering motions outside.

And then a thing tentacled its way onto the platform. It was slithering on eight suction cup-laden legs alone, and a multitude of other, thick, slimy tentacles grew out upward from there. It looked like a bamboo cluster, only if the stalks were made of stinking, twitching, slime dripping tentacles. In the middle of the tentacle forest, towering above Steve and Julie, a large, veiny eyeball stared outward, resting only on a slimy socket beneath itself.

Tentacle face focused its gaze and produced an unintelligible splatter of noise.

“Right,” moray face sneered, “I think it’s our lucky day. We caught ourselves a pretty one. Look at that slutty outfit, huh, Hank?”

Hank splattered forth another comment, drops of thin, smelly gunk spraying over the cold platform.

Steve had heard enough already. His face had flushed red in anger, so he made a heroic step forward, going around Julie, trying to shield her now and engaged the newcomers, “Listen, you freaks,” he threatened, “If you think I’m going to allow you sick fucks to lay as much as a dirty finger on her, I’ll fucking gouge your eyes out! Especially, you, eyeballs!” He pointed an aggressive finger from one monster to the other.

Suddenly there was and odd silence inside the dark shaft. Moray face’s jaw clenched, and tentacle face froze so hard even the goop stopped oozing from the myriad of slime glands. Then it produced an offended, stinky fart cloud in protest.

“How do you know we’re after _her_?” Moray face’s expression was a grimasse of sleaze.

“Who— Who’s running around in a slutty outfit?” Steve asked, a grave suspicion on his mind.

“It’s you, dumbass!” moray face shouted violently, “You’re the one prancing around in your underwear!”

“Fuck you!” Steve yelled, “I won’t let you twist this around. You’re the ones who forcibly abducted us, you’re the ones with the rapey talk, and you’re the ones holding us hostage here!” He raised his gun and pointed it at moray face.

“Come on!” Moray face laughed just to mock them, “It’s like you’re wearing a t-shirt that says ‘please rape me’ on it!”

“There’s circumstance involved,” Steve said sincere, speaking through his teeth.

But moray face just growled, “You’re asking for it,” his tongue hanging out the side of his mouth, and advancing on them, tentacle face in tow.

“Eat shit!” Steve yelled, pulling the trigger.

The gun produced a pretty rich sounding, metallic clicking noise, but nothing else. Moray face started producing a dirty laugh as he came closer.

“Julie!” Steve cried, “The fuck’s wrong with your guns?”

“EMP field, remember?” she said, taking a defensive stance across from the green ogre, ready to keep him away from Steve, “Stay behind me.”

“Why are there computer chips in your _guns, damnabit??_ ” Steve yelled, dropping the useless firearm.

“They’re fully social media integrated,” said Julie, “You’ve got a kill count on twitter, facebook live stream―”

“POV kill cam,” the ogre continued, “Keep her out of my way,” he ordered the other monster.

Julie wanted to keep tentacle face away, but it quickly got a hold of her, the goopy suction cups entangling all of her limbs, and the strongest tentacle forcing a tight choke around her neck.

The ogre made it past her, and Steve backed up, but soon noticed the cockpit was against his back, leaving him nowhere to run. The huge beast was closing in on him, a thick flesh rod raising between its legs, protruding aggressively forward, leaving a trail of slimy precum on the platform.

Julie fought for air behind them, producing savage choking noises, her eyes bulging, her face slowly turning blue.

“You can kill her. I’m fine with this bitch over here,” moray face growled, “What are you, half-ogre?”

Julie tried to keep her eye on Steve for as along as she could, but the space ogre was already towering over him. Hopelessly struggling for breath, she panicked with the prospect of violent suffocation.

Then, a sharp _bang_ suddenly resonated from the hangar walls.

Julie and tentacle face observed the ogre’s backside. He just stood there. Eventually, a trickle of green liquid started dripping from a tiny hole in his skull, quickly turning into a river of blood.

There was a series of gunshots, _bang-bang, bang-bang_. On the ogre’s back, small damp spots appeared in a square pattern, turning into bloody gushes. The green blood started forming a puddle with his precum between the feet of the monster. Then he groaned, fell forward like a tree trunk, smashing down flat on his face. Once he lay in his own waste, the life leaving the horrid body, his bowels released their contents a final time loudly.

Behind him, next to the cockpit, stood Steve. He had the green info skin covering his eyeballs, two red crosshairs glowing across his pupils. He was holding the very gun he had fetched back home to defend himself.

Steve stepped over the dead rapist, advancing on tentacle face. The monster gargled something, nervously spraying goop from its glands, with a twitching eye.

The crosshairs in Steve’s eyes readjusted, and his gun bellowed a shot while walking, the bullet hitting tentacle face square in the eyeball, turning it into an explosive splatter of stinking mush. Then the alien collapsed into a lifeless heap of slimy tentacles.

Julie fell to her feet, coughing. She bent down on all fours at once, and threw up. Steve rushed over, putting the gun down and held her hair, waiting for her to choke out the panic of almost being murdered.

When she was able to stand upright again, she touched her painfully aching throat, speaking hoarsely, “That was pretty awesome, Steve.”

“Uh-huh,” he grinned.

“Thanks,” she groaned, wiping tears from her face.

“You’re welcome,” he grinned.

“We gotta get you out of your underpants, though,” she went to fetch the clothes she had held earlier, still holding her throat, “Here, put this on,” she threw him a gray jumpsuit with dark red patches on the shoulders and thighs.

“Should I just put this on over my bare skin?”

“It’s a smart fabric. It’ll keep cleaner than anything you ever wore, trust me,” she made a quick motion behind her back with her hand, unhooking her leather brassiere. It snapped away from her chest, dropping to the floor, her bare breasts sitting freely and perkily on her chest. Her large areolae threw wrinkles in the icy hangar air, and her nipples stood at attention for Steve’s inspecting gaze, his eyeballs swelling.

“Get a hold of yourself,” she snapped, “And take those damn clothes of yours off already. Seriously, how hard is it to get you naked?”

“Alright, alright,” Steve agreed, turning around to give them a minimum of privacy while they stepped out of their clothes.

Once they had changed, he noticed she had put her heavy boots and thigh protectors back on over the jumpsuit. He only kept his gun, concealed in a utility pocket at his hip. She went to get her razor sword and strapped it to her back over her shoulders, using the charging cord. Steve was waiting next to the open hatch.

“One moment,” Julie said and threw him a plastic bottle,” Spray those tentacles with this. Generously.”

Steve emptied the bottle over the corpse, “Okay, and why?”

“Because it’ll just grow a new eye and come after us. Step outside.”

He did, and she followed. Once outside, she lit a small thermite charge and threw it across to the tentacle corpse, which ignited in a splash of flame, producing a gut-wrenching howl of pain.

“Oh shit,” Steve said while Julie messed with the controls next to the hatch in the hallway. Then, the platform suddenly gave, dropping downward and hitting the shaft wall. The ship, the bodies and the goop slid off into the black abyss, so Julie just closed the hatch and started walking down the hallway.

“Oh shit,” Steve repeated quietly, then followed her deeper into the alien spaceship.

 


	8. Callbacks

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> After Steve has shown his merit as a reliable partner to Julie, the two of them have a moment to breathe.

  _Now here you stand,_

_Before my naked eyes,_

_My heart is pounding so,_

_If I should die in your arms,_

_What a lovely way to go._

* * *

Julie forced another hatch door open. This one was much larger, so she didn’t have to push it all that far. Groaning and panting, she dragged herself onto this deck, Steve clinging to her backside in a piggyback ride.

“Get off of me. Bejeezus,” she grunted, bucking up and throwing the podcaster off her back.

Steve fell on his shoulder painfully, but he didn’t complain, rather he said, “Well, thanks for the ride.”

“Shut up,” she huffed, “I hate―”

“Ye-es?” Steve grinned.

“Your stupid face. Shut― your stupid face. Noob,” She rolled around on her back, still chuffing.

“That’s right, catch some breath,” he said, getting to his feet and closing the hatch behind them, but not before he looked down the tight pipe with the single ladder that Julie had climbed up for like, a hundred and twenty decks. There had been no choice but to use the ladder, as the turbolifts were out. Since Steve had steeled his body with relentless indoor videogaming over many years, he had been ready to quit at around stage 2-1. So Julie had been forced to give him a piggyback ride for about a hundred decks.

“Where are we?” he asked, looking around. There were no lights here, but one side of the room was illuminated in the neutral white glow of a monitor, which was about two stories high. In front of this, along its entire length, ran a wide console with enough buttons, screens and contraptions to manage the entire universe, it seemed. The monitor was blank, and only emitted a barely audible, neutral buzz.

“Main bridge,” Julie groaned. She was back on her feet, but supported herself by resting her hands on her kneecaps.

“Nuh-uh,” he said, “Can’t be right. This place looks like a dump.”

“Shut up for a minute. Will ya? You’re not being very lovable right now.”

“About that,” he kept talking regardless, “Now that I got us out of the most recent pickle, would it kill you to give my silly nickname a rest?”

“Okay. How about―” she didn’t really have to think, “Steve-a-reno?”

“No.”

“Steve-a-roni?”

“Na-uh.”

“Doctor Beardface?” she tried.

“Come on!”

“Your face is like, five sixths beard.”

“Steve will do just fine,” he tilted his head, trying to look sincere.

“Alright then,” she conceded, “Hey Steve?”

“Yea?”

“You’re on break,” she said and started walking toward the big screen.

“Alright, pal,” he murmured, walking in the other direction, examining the room. Some chairs were laying all around this deck, in places where tables would have made sense, but there were none, and the chairs were in no condition to sit in. Some of the cushions were singed. In the middle of the room lay something the size of a water boiler, which turned out to be a moldy beer keg. And all over the place Steve noticed the familiar sight of trashed solo cups along with a ton of broken glass, and something squishy he just stepped in.

He raised his shoe to check it out. It was a used condom. It had the moldy residue still in the reservoir, and reeked enough for him to notice while standing up.

“No way this is the main bridge, Julie,” he said, gagging a little, “Where is everyone?”

“What do you mean?”

“The crew.” He held in his breath, stopped in his tracks by a shocking sight. Human remains sat in the shadows right in front of him. They were two skeletons, leaning against a wall, hugging each other. They looked kind of cute that way.

“It’s on autopilot,” Julie explained. She was messing with the console under the huge screen.

“Huh,” Steve groaned absent-minded. Between the two skeletons sat another thing, a rusty, small robot with arms and legs. It had two large dishes for ears, and the tiny hands had come to a rest over the two skeletal crotches.

Steve gave one of the skeletons a small kick against the foot. It twitched, the skull moved, and now it looked as if it was grinning at Steve.

“Freaky,” he murmured.

“Check this out,” Julie said.

“ _Konniii-chiwaaah!_ ” the massive screen roared across the deck, “ _Kyō_ _wa nani ga dekimasu ka?_ ”

The two-story screen now showed a two-story animation of a mascot, which looked just like the ship they were on: blue ball, green eyes, large, absurd emoticon smile in pink. It was happily bouncing about, apparently focused on Julie.

Steve joined her at the console, “What are you doing?”

“Putting in the coordinates for our destination.”

“Just like that?”, he asked, noticing that all the buttons she was pressing were labeled in Japanese also.

“Yea, why not? This thing works like an Uber, basically. You get on, indicate your destination, and it takes you there. Without the driver taking the scenic route just to get with you, of course.”

She hit a button, finishing the registration process, and the massive animation roared, “ _Arigatōgozaimashita! Anata no michi ga tanoshiku naru yō ni!_ ” Then, the gigantic smiley face went back to bopping about.

“You speak Japanese?” he quizzed her.

“Just enough to get around. You’ll pick up some phrases eventually if you’re doing as much traveling as I do.”

“Hm. So, how long will it take for us to get there?”

“Well, lemme see,” she said, playfully pushing buttons. On screen, a humongous animated blue print appeared.

“Woa,” gasped Steve, “What’s that?”

“It’s the engine layout,” she said, apparently in thought, “Well, by my calculation it’ll take about … thirty minutes to get there, maybe forty.”

“Wowsers,” Steve quipped, “That’s fast. How does this baby work?” And he added, “In my old life, I was kind of a science nerd, you know?”

“Oh I know,” she said quickly, “Well, it takes about thirty minutes because―”

“Yes?”

“Because the engine runs on movie logic.”

“What now?” Steve turned his head to her suddenly. Julie grinned and then started shaking with laughter.

“You’re joshing, right? You’re making fun of me, aren’t you?” he said.

“You’re so cute when you’re trying to figure stuff out,” she burst out between laughs, “Just like on the show,” she did a Steve-a-reno voice, “ _Ho boy, I wonder how this funky position works_ ― _deeerp I have no spatial reasoning deeerp_ ―”

Steve started laughing also, “Fuck you! This isn’t fair, alright? This is a home game for you. The fuck do I know about this freak show you call a universe?”

They shared a laugh while walking away from the white screen. Located in the opposite direction was an observation platform, surrounded by transparent alloys. Standing inside the green half circle, Steve and Julie realized they were in one of the tall eyes of the smiley ship. As it was speeding through space with high velocity, the stars were shooting past the two of them, leaving lonely, white traces behind.

Julie leaned on Steve, an arm around his shoulders. She looked down at him.

“You acted pretty cool earlier, when you put some holes into those two assholes, I have to say,” Julie acknowledged, sounding genuinely content with the noob.

“Thanks,” he said boldly, his hands in his pockets, watching the stars stream by.

“You called one of them _eyeballs_ ,” she snickered.

“Yea. Did you like that?”

“I almost laughed in their faces.”

Steve looked up at her. She didn’t say anything. She was just watching him quietly, smiling, observing how his eyes searched something in her face.

“Julie, I―”

Suddenly Julie grimaced, raising a hand to her temple. She drew in some air, telling him she might be in pain, and then Steve realized that she touched the spot where her interface port connected with her skull.

“What’s the matter?” he asked, worried.

“I’m okay,” she said with an expression that told him it was not true, “It’s nothing, long day, that’s all. We can’t meet up with my contact fast enough, I really, _really_ need to discharge soon.”

Steve started to feel a little guilty. There was a slight anxiety swelling up inside him, which even his enhanced tentacle brain could not suppress.

Leaning on him, she held his shoulder more firmly for support. Then Steve turned toward her, to face her, raising his arm to her waist, holding her gently.

Julie blinked open her eyes, not having expected him to act so familiar with her all of a sudden. She held her gaze on his face, giving him a little bit of a stumped look. He raised his chin a little, and enclosed her waist with his other arm, holding her closer. His hands moved up on her back, letting him feel the tight muscles beneath the thin fabric of her jumpsuit.

She spoke to him in a low voice, “What are you doing?”

Steve’s hands had reached her shoulder blades, “I really can’t say,” he said with care, holding her body very close to him now. It had never felt so comfortable for the two of them to look directly at each other.

“I really want to kiss you now,” she said softly.

Steve nodded just the slightest bit, “Okay.”

Seen from the other side of the room, only the outline of their shadows was visible against the dark of space, when Julie bowed down a little for him. Her hands ran along the body of the lovable noob, up to his face, holding him very gently, as her lips came down and touched his, her dark hair falling over his face, tickling his bearded cheeks slightly. Her kiss was very careful at first, giving him enough time to explore his feelings. To make sure the podcaster kissed her back.

He did.

Steve wanted to hold her closer, embracing her tall body more firmly, pulling Julie more into him, greedy to feel her shape pressed against his. Julie opened her mouth, and so did he, not thinking, forgetting about the fresh hell of the hours past, as her kisses gradually became more eager, more demanding, for the passion Julie had properly observed in the noob. Within a moment, besides the sterile hum from the large monitor, two other noises were audible, the sharp sound of two zippers roughly torn open. They peeled each other’s jumpsuits off like snakes shedding old skin, only much quicker, and stood closely entangled, wringing and writhing with one another, hungry for the burning skin of a new lover, like two cobras fighting for life and death.

 

**_FADE TO BLACK._ **

 

* * *

  _If this is sin,_

_Baby count me in,_

_I can’t turn back now_

_I’ve got to have all of you._


	9. His Last Words

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Steve has some trouble tracking Julie down, and she has some trouble tracking her contact down.

* * *

_A strange place this Dirtball is_

_A lot of guns a lot of rich folks spitting on bums,_

_A lot of hoodlums_

_These are just the bums that are really pissed off_

* * *

 

Before the colossal outline of a massive, vaguely round object floating aimlessly through the depths of space, a tiny blue sphere approached at great velocity. As if sure where to go, the blue, pink, smiling sphere circled around the massive, brownish space station, like an anxious bee, searching for that entry into the hive. When it was finally granted permission to land, the comparatively small sphere floated through a rectangular opening many times the size of the ship. Illuminated guiding arrows, about the size of Rhode Island, highlighted the landing bay, perhaps to the eyes of the gods.

Guided by invisible maneuvering streams, the smiley ship floated smoothly through a number of landing hangars, all of which were bathed in the soft glow of an industrial orange light. Once its forward momentum finally came to a halt, a set of three enormous steel supports rose out of the hangar floor, allowing the smiley ship a very gentle landing, producing a deafening, metallic echo nonetheless. The sound traveled through the depths of the landing bays and would have deafened any organic ears, if there would have been any organic engineers present.

A gangplank, mounted inside a tube made of transparent alloys, appearing as thin as a hair and as straight as an arrow, extended from a hole in the hangar wall and made a connection, right where one would imagine the nose tip of the vessel. Then, more tubes shot forth from the walls, closing a multitude of connections in a half-circle. Fully automated, the main entry hatches opened, releasing thick streams of passengers, pulsing through the tubes with great force, headed for the boarding hatches.

Once disembarked to Dirtball station, the passengers reached a vast landing deck, which most of them tried crossing as quickly as possible, for it was rife with tourist traps, overpriced duty free shops, questionable vending machines and con artists. Across the landing deck, the newcomers surged like ants towards one of the many travolators, all of which bent down into a slight decline after a short distance only. Above them rose an immense dome of transparent synthetic polymer, allowing an eerily deep gaze into the bowels of Dirtball station. Visitors were met with a horizon of thousands of decks and platforms, a myriad of towers and shopping bunkers, and the millions of deviants and burn outs teeming within, all of which clung to the inside of the colossal space station, sticking to the walls like flies, by virtue of artificial gravity.

But Julie paid the familiar scenery no attention, making haste down the travolator instead. She took long steps, her razor sword swinging angrily from side to side on her back.

“Julie!” Steve hollered after her, almost beseeching her, “Julie, wait for me!”

She came to a halt, turning around for the podcaster. When he reached her, huffing for air, he saw her roll her eyes at him, putting an annoyed hand to her hip.

“Stop yelling out my name in public,” she spoke in a low voice, but emphatically, “And don’t you think I’ve awarded you enough of my time?”

Steve was a little bit at a loss for words, but tried, “Your attitude really isn’t helping, Julie.”

It was a mistake, “ _My_ attitude?” she spat, eyes burning.

“Listen—” he pleaded.

“ _Can it,_ ” she cut him off, raising a long index finger under his chin, “Soft as a baby seal, huh?” She drew in some breath and cocked her head sideways, squinting, “ _That’s a classic._ ”

She turned her back on him, her hair flying, and picked up her quick pace, away from Steve, speaking of her indignance.

The lovable noob let his shoulders slump down, puffing out his desperation. Watching Julie vanish among the strange aliens, he blinked his info skin down in order to trace her signature through the crowds.

* * *

  _This is our world_

_This is our world_

_This is our world_

_This is our world_

_So get the fuck out_

* * *

 

Steve stepped through a perfectly round hole in the wall. It was framed with chrome colored materials, and lit up in flashy neon colors in no discernible pattern. A noise emanated from the deck on the other side which, with a good imagination, might have resembled loud music. Steve found himself at the top of a short flight of stairs, inside a room that was teeming with people and a number of other things that he was fairly certain were not people. The air seemed to be rich with smoke, but it turned out to be scented vapor, and on top of everything he felt as if he was being watched. It wasn’t him being nervous, because a dozen robotic eyes did glance in the direction of the newcomer, but they were nowhere near as bad as the drooping organic leers he got out of some of the corners.

The circular deck had another half circle at the wall to his left. A robot was working behind the low counter, relentlessly doling out things to the customers. What he was handing out might have been food and drink. This told Steve he had entered a bar. And the robot behind the counter looked vaguely familiar in shape and shine, like, well, Kera’s alien robot eye.

Steve climbed down half a dozen steps into the belly of the bar. Distributed along the circular wall were booths, elevated on a platform, were people sat at tables like regular folks, at least mostly. But in the middle of the room, people had formed a circle, and looked down at the floor, motioning and hollering in aggressive ways, as if cheering. The floor was transparent, and Steve looked down into the pit below, and what he saw was appalling.

He watched some sort of fight going on, between a number of scantily clad people, save for the insectoids. There were several large beasts with massive claws and acid spewing glands down there, trying to shred the half naked folks into pieces. Steve had watched only for a second, and then they were done trying, and the slimy remains of the poor victims shot up like fountains, smeared against the transparent floor, and the crowd was cheering.

“Oh, fuck,” Steve murmured to himself, “What in the—” He had assumed that the fight was over, but the arena below was detached and lowered like a can of tuna, and then moved out of vision, and put in place by massive machinery was a new tuna can, and the crowd went berserk around him. Steve saw motions down there now which were a lot more familiar to him. After all, he and Kera had elaborated on many of the unspeakable sex practices that were displayed below the transparent floor now.

Steve was already tired with forming an opinion on the relative barbarism of the place and instead continued to blink his info skin operational. He tried focusing on tall, humanoid shapes of apparently female gender, but that got too many results inside the bar. So he filtered his vision only to highlight those who had heightened body temperature and tension in posture due to apparent agitation. But this yielded too many results, still. So the podcaster sighed, and filtered by breast size, pairs only, and that resulted in only one individual with a single set of 41Ds.

Julie stood at the other end of the room, between a flight of stairs leading upward and the bar, leaning on a table, so he made his way over.

“Come here often?” He smirked, trying to brake the pattern of their earlier squabble.

“You took your time,” she responded, “I hope you didn’t buy any tourist souvenirs?”

“How? Unless they want me to pay them in bullets, I’ve got nothing to offer them.”

“Oh, don’t make yourself smaller than you really are, Steve,” she barely paid him any attention, instead studied her tablet.

“You’re deriding me still, aren’t you?” Steve said sharply, annoyed.

“I’d never,” she said neutrally, and then, seemingly unconnected to anything prior, “He’s with me.” She raised her head, tilted to the side, looking over Steve’s shoulder, behind him.

Steve turned around and was flabbergasted at what he saw. He was looking at a tall, slender person with white skin, not what he would have called Caucasian, but actually white as milk, marbled with a very delicate pattern of faint purple. At the end of a long, slender neck, a triangular shaped head throned with a set of three eyes. They were set apart in a cute way by very high, sharply angled cheekbones. Instead of eyeballs, this person had compound eyes, each shining in a different color: red, yellow and purple. Where Steve would have expected the mouth, they had a set of vertically aligned, soft lips instead. They flushed a little as this person approached, and heaved just the slightest bit. They were hairless, the head instead ending in a bushel of extensions in the same skin color as the rest of the head, the appendages collected into an updo with a fashionable, glittering chain.

The slender being wore a shiny, neon pink vinyl jacket with an insanely high collar. Below the jacket, it wore a light green, skin-tight fitting set of pants made from a wet looking material with a fake lizard pattern. Its outfit generously revealed a slender midriff with a very cute, just slightly protruding tummy, which featured no belly button. The bare skin was decorated with intricate body art, framing the body from head to toe, forming interesting patterns across the belly, neck and skull. And this was only what was visible to Steve.

“That’s okay,” they said in a hushed voice, “I’m into that. We can have a good time, you, me and your slave.” When they spoke, the lips on the face didn’t move. A barely visible collection of horizontal skin flaps around the neck, like gills, slightly moved instead. The voice was high, incredibly soft and featured an accent of English truly alien to Steve.

“Not. Interested,” Julie said firmly, tilting her head forward, staring the white person in the face.

“Fine,” they roared in a very different, dark tone of voice, then, stretching the shoulders back, the compound eyes twitched, focusing on Steve. Within a split second, a triple flash of light in the three eye colors shot at Steve, blinding him.

“Fuck,” he cussed, raising his hand to cover his eyes, looking away, “What did you do to me?” He rubbed his eyeballs, waiting for his sight to come back within a moment.

They were gone.

“It’s fine,” Julie explained, looking at her phone again, “They just read you out.”

“Read me out? What?”

“Yea. Don’t worry about it, it was just gathering personal information. It’s like a website reading your cookies. Or like Alexa analyzing your farts to discern the imbalance of your diet so it can help you make healthier food choices.”

“That’s actually called an Amazon Echo,” Steve corrected her.

She rolled her eyes at him and kept swishing her fingers over the screen, “Anyway, the next hooker to approach you is probably gonna be more personalized to your needs, Steve. You might find it irresistible,” she said facetiously.

“I can get people customized?”

“They aren’t people in the strictest sense of the word,” she shook her head lightly, “But you might have a night you’ll never forget, Steve.”

“Woh. I’m partially tempted. I mean, under different circumstances—”

“—you’ll also experience an unforgettable type of the clap that will introduce your body to several new types of ichor if you decide to get with one of these professionals,” she raised a very smart eyebrow at him.

“Yuk. What a lovely conversation we’re having. Do we absolutely have to go on with it?” Steve complained, “I mean, what about your contact?”

She threw her head back, dropping her phone on the table, glancing around the room, “Yea, what about him? He should have approached us by now.”

“What’s he look like?” Steve was looking around also, not that it would have helped any.

“He’s probably going to be trying to avoid easy recognition,” she said in a very neutral tone.

“Al-right,” Steve slowed his words a little, “Just trying to do what I can here. What’s his name?”

Julie looked him in the face and spoke a word. But when she did, Steve felt like a resonating smack hit him on the _inside_ of his head, and all he heard was disturbing interference, as if her voice was coming through a speaker that was not plugged in correctly.

“Ow,” he went, touching his forehead, looking down at the table.

Julie perked up, “What is it?”

“I— I don’t know. I felt pain when you spoke his name. Try— Just say that again.”

She looked at him and slowly repeated her words, “#m###r.” It was painful for Steve to even watch her lips move, and in his ears the arduous noise echoed again.

Julie aimed her device in his direction, “Could you understand me?”

“No, I— that was just fucked up, ow,” he said, holding the sides of his head.

“This is interesting.”

“Agree to disagree,” he said annoyed.

Her hands ran over her device, “Let’s try again. Sm#k#r?”

Steve produced an agonized shriek, and a smacking noise shot through his brain like a bullet. It was a sudden and blasting sound, like one a big television would produce if it was switched on and high voltage instantly shot all the circuitry to hell.

“Did you say Smoker?” Steve finally asked, his eyes watering a little from his sharp headache.

Julie pressed down on her phone, which repeated the name in a sterile tone: _Smoker._

“I— did,” Julie said, furrowing her brow.

He was fretting, “How do you not know what you just said?”

“Never mind that now, Steve. It’s the name of your other producer.”

“Slash editor,” Steve corrected.

“Uh-huh. Tell me about him,” she requested, picking her phone up again to have a look at Smoker’s file.

“Well,” Steve began, blowing up his cheeks, “He’s seen and heard the least among the four of us—”

“Yes,” Julie echoed, swiping her screen in different directions.

“Sticks to the background, only talks on the podcast when he absolutely has to, practically invisible to the audience.”

“Practically invisible,” she repeated, swishing over the screen, walking back and forth a few paces, “Fuck. I’m not getting any signature radiation from a cloaking device here,” she drew her info skin over her eyes. A green glow went across them, from side to side.

“Cloaking? No-no-no, he’d never hide.”

“Meaning?” she asked, scanning for patterns, her eyes shining brightly.

“No way. He just melts into the background—”

“Right— and he’s always there but you still don’t _notice_ him!” Julie had bent her knees slightly, and then shot her right arm suddenly forward, her hand ready to grab something. In a split second, it looked like she had hit the air itself, which oddly twitched in response. A surprised gargle could be heard, followed by a panicked gasp for breath. Right next to Julie, a shuddering shower of color seemed to wash through the air itself, starting to shape a body, and then it appeared as if Julie was grabbing onto someone else’s throat. She had forcefully lifted the guy off of his feet by the neck, but now he landed back on them, one set of hands trying to remove Julie’s choke from his neck, and another set of arms trying to push her away from him.

She let up right away, giving the bulky guy a firm push. Steve studied the new guy, who was about Julie’s height, with a chest only slightly narrower than a beer truck and skin as gray and matte as ash. He wore a skin-tight black shirt of some glossy material, resembling polyester, and a set of dark cargo shorts. The guy had enough muscles under this attire to hunt down a demon who makes trophies of men.

Julie had pushed him against another high table, but it was empty and fell over, the remaining glassware on top crashing into shambles on the transparent floor. Many people had observed the scene, and were getting a kick out of leering over.

“I’ll wager 400 quatloos on the newcomer!” some jackass shouted, and the bar erupted in resonating laughter, several bystanders throwing opened beer cans at the trio, splashing foreign liquids all over them.

“Let’s move,” Julie suggested, shoving Smoker in front of her, and keeping Steve in tow by his hand, leading the group up the flight of stairs on a higher level of the bar.

On the next level, the bar column just continued and another alien robot eye tended it. The floor was made of glass again, but people shuffled around, which loosely resembled dancing. The booths at the walls were also on platforms, but shadier up here, and in some of them unspeakable things happened, short of Naruto being boiled alive, but some eggs were definitely positioned. Some might have been _hatched_ for all Steve could tell.

Julie shoved Steve into a circular bench in an empty booth and took a seat. Smoker stayed on his feet, his wide back turned to the dance floor, shielding the others somewhat from vision.

“You okay buddy boy?” Smoker nodded at Steve, speaking in a very familiar voice, only much hoarser. He messed with a black bag he had strapped to one of his upper arms and took out a thick ENDS pen. He stared at Steve while closing his lips around it, and then dragged on it, making it glow in a deep green in the dark of the bar. He then bent his head up, releasing a brassy cloud of vapor above them, smelling intensely of copper.

“Steve, you’re staring,” Julie said, reaching over and under his chin, closing his jaw, “I was afraid you’d start drooling.”

“You have so many eyes,” Steve said, staring at Smoker again.

“He’s making me feel very self-conscious, Julie,” Smoker pointed out.

“I know. He does that. Steve, what did we say about getting a hold of ourselves?”

Smoker raised the vaping device, taking a long drag, his hand resting in his muscular arm bend, and another set of arms folded in front of his lower chest. Then, he blew a thick cloud in Steve’s face and looked at Julie instead, “Did you break him?”

“Just give him a minute,” she suggested.

“He sounds as if the crossover turned his brain into mush,” Smoker scoffed.

“Who are you? Fucking Ant Man?” Steve asked.

“If anything, I’m Spider Man, for you, thanks.”

“I’m counting six limbs, dude.”

“Because I’m still wearing pants,” Smoker took another long drag, observing how this idea sat with Steve.

But the podcaster was at a loss for words right now, so Smoker went on quizzing Julie instead, “He’s a little squishy, your Keanu, isn’t he?”

“Keanu? What?” Steve squinted from one person to another.

Smoker didn’t answer, instead extended one of his four hands and brushed gently up against Steve’s left breast, jiggling it very slightly.

“You like that, baby?” Smoker said softly.

Steve slapped his hand away, “Stop that. It’s not funny.”

“Could become fun though, alien man.”

“Not interested,” Steve said, shooting a cold stare at the gray man.

“What’s wrong with your face?” Smoker asked then, squinting with some of his eyes.

“ _My_ face?”, Steve snapped, “What’s wrong with _your_ face, six-eyes?” Steve barked.

“Eight eyes,” Smoker said, pointing out two small nubs on the side, “And I’m not kidding. I’m talking about this,” he brushed one of his cheeks with his hand.

Julie shot Smoker a quick look. Steve touched his cheek incredulously, “I haven’t looked into a mirror since we left. The fuck is this?”

He touched his cheek, rubbing the skin. It felt tougher, and dry. He unzipped the upper part of his jumpsuit and looked down at his shoulder, over his left side. The black shit on his skin had been spreading. He cussed, and touched himself. No, this apparently _was_ his skin now.

“Oh my gawd. What’s happening to me, Julie? It’s spreading. The black shit that got on me is growing into my skin—”

“Don’t worry about it,” she said.

Smoker raised random eyebrows at her, and Steve did notice.

“I _have_ to worry about this,” Steve was getting angry at her, “I need help. It’s eating my fucking skin!”

“Okay, agreed. We can take you to a specialist,” she shot Smoker another look, but Steve was looking at the black mess this time, “We’ll take care of it. But right now we have to worry about locating the weapon.”

“And find Meghan,” Steve insisted.

“And find her,” Julie repeated, looking at Smoker, “You can do that for me. I’ll give you the information about the woman and you can relay it to the boss. Maybe you can locate her while I prepare Steve for deployment.”

“Prepare me?” Steve asked, zipping his jumpsuit back up.

“Yea,” Smoker said, “Help you be less squishy. We have some equipment for you, but it’ll have to be attuned to you personally. That lil’ jumper of yours ain't gonna stop jack shit out there. And we’ll need you in one piece, at least for a while.”

“Your pep talk is invigorating,” Steve said, shaking his head slowly.

“Sorry. I’m not used to working with outsiders. Julie is the one who took the training in social interactions that is mandatory if you’re attempting to use a crossover device.”

“She did?” Steve snickered, “That’s the funniest joke I’ve heard all night.”

She frowned at him, “Steve, I bet you could use a drink, huh? Fetch us all some. On my tab.” She nodded at the bar.

“Fuck you,” Steve said, “My life is on the line, and Meghan’s. I’m gonna hear every word you two shucklefucks say.”

Smoker genuinely laughed at that, but Julie looked at him adamantly, “You’re just complicating our jobs here. You’ll hear what I want you to hear. Sorry, Steve.”

“Oh, is this why I’m supposed to trust you? Remind me again, please?”, he said angrily.

“It’s my turf. I’m in charge. I know what I’m doing. That’s why,” she said matter-of-factly.

“Right,” Steve said, pissed, getting up and past Julie.

When he passed, she touched his arm, “It’s easier this way, please try to understand. We should move as fast as we can, and I can’t stop and explain everything to you. You’ve seen how we live now. You’re a long way from Reading, Steve. I’m not trying to be an asshole.”

“Maybe you’re just naturally an asshole, then,” Steve said, still pissed.

She accepted that, nodding, and then she nodded her head at the bar, and he started walking away.

Once he was out of earshot, Smoker asked “The fuck is wrong with him?”

“Never mind that now, I’ve got it covered,” she messed with her tablet again, “Do you feel any different?”

“Naw,” he said quickly.

“That’s crazy. My readout picks up so much disturbance it’s wondrous the air isn’t flickering around you,” she had raised an eyebrow, not sure what to make of the data.

“And him?” Smoker nodded in the direction of Steve, who was presently being ignored by the robot barkeep.

“Well, same. Worse, actually. Obviously,” Julie shrugged.

Smoker leaned in a little closer to her, “We’re sticking out like sore thumbs here. There’s no way to hide from, or jump, the Loc-Nar _now_. We didn’t prepare for this.”

“There was no way we could have, Smoker,” Julie declared, trying to change the tone, “We’ll adjust. Transmit my files and talk to the boss asap.”

He decidedly shook his head, “No, I’ll tap right into the conscious stream after this.”

She glared at him, showing teeth, “That’s too risky, Smoker.”

He cocked his head sideways, “Oh? Look who’s talking?”

Julie sat back, her face hardening.

He spoke harshly, “You get shit done your way, I get shit done my way. How often do I have to say this?”

“Right. Sorry,” she said, eluding his stare.

He pressed on, “Who’s this chick I’m supposed to find for you? The Chost?”

“No, it’s his wife. Her dossier is included in my files. She should be the only source of disturbance besides you and him, so it should be easy to locate her. I’ll let you know if any new sources well up around him.”

“Uh-huh,” he said, leaning in fully now over the table, his arms crossed, speaking dark and very slowly, “Question for you, sweetheart: how _the fuck_ did his wife get here?”

Julie’s mouth hardened, “We were ambushed at his place.”

“How did you not anticipate that?”

“I was _prepping_. I don’t typically write my own briefings, _Smoker._ Maybe you wanna challenge the boss if you can muster the courage, and she can tell you what went wrong.”

He shook his head, looking elsewhere, right when Steve returned with drinks.

“Okay, here’s my last words,” the podcaster put three drinks on the table, but the others looked at him quizzically.

“Wait, that came out wrong. I mean, I got us Last Words, but I had to tell the barkeep how to make them. Getting gin and lime was no big deal, but they don’t have either Chartreuse or Maraschino. So the guy put in something called Bloo Aak, and another thing called Colloscopian _Jizz,”_ the three of them looked down into their glasses, where the blue alien jizz was drawing ropey streaks through the green of the lime juice, “Well, it’s definitely not raspberry syrup—”

Julie swooped up a glass and took a big gulp, a thick drop running down her chin after she put her glass back down. Steve had gone back to staring at people, her in particular right then.

“What?” she asked, “I can really use a drink,” Steve kept staring, “ _Ugh_ , it’s _soda_ , okay? It’s supposed to be funny, sex sells and all that shit. It’s pretty much corn syrup. Try it, it’s pretty good.”

“Drink up your jizz, podcaster,” Smoker chuckled, then sampled his own drink while Steve kept staring into his glass.

* * *

_This is our world_

_This is our world_

_This is our world_

_This is our world_

_So get the fuck out_

* * *

 

 


	10. Bang Bang

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Julie has to work out a couple things with Smoker, so Steve tries to enjoy a moment with the first drink since yesterday.

 

* * *

 

Steve took a moment to himself, tuning out of the conversation between Julie and Smoker. He just wanted to take a breather with his drink, if only to get a chance to listen to his own thoughts. The Bloo Aak had a slightly acidic quality, while the jizzy soda was every bit as sweet and spicy as Chartreuse was. Once he had gotten over the slimy texture that the alien beverage left his mouth with, he accepted _The Last Word_ as sort of a decent drink.

However, a sudden unease crept into Steve’s mood, belying the usually relaxing quality of a nice cocktail. He raised his head to take in the room anew, surveying this level of the bar for anything out of the ordinary. Well, anything weird exceeding the general level of weirdness encircling him.

His eyes finally noticed one of the bouncers. The bulky, muscular person with a shaved head had just started talking to a woman who had come freshly into the bar. She was leaning into the bouncer, so as not to let anyone listen in on what she had to say, while obviously keeping an eye on anything happening inside the bar. The thing about that eye was, it was black and had a piercing purple glow right about where others like to keep a pupil.

The bouncer seemed to be inclined to confer with the smaller woman. She wore something across her back, also, but Steve could not tell what it was. Apparently she had some questions for the bouncer, who nodded first in the affirmative, then into the room. Pleased, the woman in the heavy leather coat then turned and seemed to give her thanks, before she walked a tough pair of black boots down the stairs, into the bar. Her head moved, very slowly, from side to side. Obviously looking for something, her dark hairstyle glistened when the light show over the dance floor touched her head. She kept it long only up top, raising high like a messy Mohawk, along with an outrageously short buzz cut along the sides and back. It was a wild mess of shades of violet and deep blue, bordering into the black.

On the table before Steve, Julie’s phone buzzed. She picked it up and read the display, but turned it around and put it back on the table.

“Julie,” he tried to engage her in a low voice, but she was fighting about something with Smoker.

Walking across the crowded dance floor, the woman kept surveying the room. Then her head stopped moving. Her jaw swiveling from chewing gum, her rich, violet lips were drawn into a devious smile. And the piercing, purple glow of her black eye darted across the room, fixated squarely on Steve.

The podcaster leaned into his companion, “Julie, some punk just came in here. She’s glowering a hole into my head. What do I do?” Steve moved a hand under the table, nervously tracing the shape of the gun in his pocket.

“One sec, Steve,” Julie didn’t seem to be listening to him.

The stranger started crossing the room.

“Julie, someone’s about to crash the party, _look dammit_ ,” Steve hissed quickly.

The woman picked up her step. People around her were noticing and stepped out of her way, while Steve started feeling his heartbeat in his throat. When the sweat went pouring from his forehead, the world around him was seemingly moving in slow motion.

The stranger snapped the glossy metal buckles on her coat open, and her quick step made her coattails fling outward. Beneath, she revealed a pair of leather pants, and a ruffled shirt in deep purple. An exposingly low cut made a pair of cute, perky breasts blink _hi_ at Steve, but they were neighboring with another pair of hefty SMG pistol grips, protruding from under her armpits. When Steve saw this, he immediately started fumbling with the zipper on his pocket, and blinked his info skin into action, aiming a crosshair at the chest of the woman coming for him. It showed he had eleven shots left.

Right on cue, her arms rose, while Steve was still fidgeting, and her hands found the grips of her weapons, pulling them out from a set of black double holsters.

She had almost reached them when Steve jumped to his feet, flipping over the table, sending their drinks flying through the air, the glass shattering on the dance floor. The woman’s smile grew wide as she ran towards the booth, her boots trampling, her guns raising into a firing position.

“The fuck?” Julie cried as Steve jerked up, throwing up her arms defensively, messing with Steve’s aim. He pulled the trigger mercilessly, ready to kill the armed stranger, but Julie’s arm got in the way, and Steve’s gun spit fire, sending a bullet after the woman, but it hit a speaker behind her, which started vomiting a shower of blue sparks. The patrons were now fully aware of the scene, screaming erupted, and the robot bartender cut out the booming music. All of a sudden, multiple dozens of grimy alien muzzles were aimed at the booth where Steve was standing, his weapon still raised.

But it was too late. The woman in the coat had reached the trio, standing at a distance where she could not possibly miss. She had one SMG aimed at Julie, and the other right in Steve’s face.

“Bang. Bang,” she said, grinning.

“ _The fuck is wrong with you punks?!_ ” the bouncer yelled in their direction.

Julie got to her feet, pressing Steve back down on his ass in the process, “I’m sorry everybody, for my friend here. He’s not from around, and it’s his first day in the big city. He gets a little culture shock is all.”

“Fucking rednecks!” Someone hollered.

“Yea, yea, we’re all very sorry over here. Let it all out, but mind your own business,” she said with force, after which most people went back to their drinks and the music got turned up again.

The woman in the coat had tucked away her guns. She had her hands in her coat pockets, made a loud, smacking noise with her gum and looked at Julie expectantly, her purple eye pulsing.

Julie just looked back at her, going, “Hi Kerrie.”

 

 

 

[ The reboot of Kerrie is heavily inspired by the _80s Cyperpunk Lady_ , a portrait by [PowderedToastBoy](http://powderedtoastboy.deviantart.com/) on DeviantArt. He kindly gave me permission to include his picture in this fic. If you enjoy his style, I very much recommend checking out his other works. ]


	11. Leaving Eden

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Julie and Kerrie get a chance at a heart-to-heart, at last.

_Broken and defeated,_

_Nowhere left to turn._

_Scarred beyond repair,_

_Lessons you may have learned._

 

_The last thing she remembered,_

_Is fighting for her life._

_Now the mother she never knew,_

_Wiped the last tear from her eyes._

* * *

 

Smoker put the table back in place and offered his seat to Kerrie, who sat down across her sister without paying him much attention. She removed the thing she carried from her back, which turned out to be a large pink keytar. It came to sit next to her under the table.

“That is your reaction?” Steve glowered at Julie, faking a dumb voice, “You just go: ‘hi Kerrie’?” he was still shaking a little, and getting more and more angry with his situation.

“How do you say hi to your sister?” Julie quipped, looking at him adamantly.

“She aimed her damn gun in my face,” he lamented.

“It was fine, Steve. She texted me that she was looking for me. I told her that I was sharing a booth with a puny terrestrial—”

“Fuck you!” Steve pointed a finger at her, while Smoker started grinning.

“—and Kerrie, she likes to— fool around sometimes. I guess,” Julie sighed, looking over at her sister. About a third of the cyborg’s face around her left eye was replaced with black metal, covered in a pattern of very thin lines. It was shaped exactly like the organic part of her face.

Steve drew in some breath, ready to give them a piece of his mind, but Kerrie beat him to it, “Who’s the jumpy guy?” she asked, chewing on her gum, “Did you get yourself a boyfriend?”

Smoker chuckled at that.

“What’s so damn funny, Johnny-two-cocks?” Steve glared at the gray guy.

“You say that as if it’s a bad thing,” Smoker smiled.

“He looks a lil’ squishy, doesn’t he?” Kerrie said, grinning along with Smoker.

“That’s it,” Steve was howling mad, speaking without moving his teeth, “Get me out of this place, Julie. Now,” he tried to get to his feet and past Julie.

“Actually, that was what I was about to suggest,” Julie said, then addressing Smoker, “Can you crash him into some halfway cabin if I sent you my credentials? He needs some quiet and some sleep before we can run him through the examination chambers.”

“I’m not leaving with Johnny-two-cocks,” Steve said decidedly, “I don’t think I can deal with the payload.”

Smoker wasn’t fazed much, “Sure I can. And I’m sure as hell not complaining about free advertising”, he gave Kerrie a look, who rolled her organic eye and made more smacking noises with her gum.

“And what about you?” Steve wanted to hear from Julie.

“I will find out what my sister wants,” she explained.

“Oh, sure. Go ahead and take your time then,” Steve said, acid in his tone.

“Steve,” Julie sighed, “Go with Smoker and have some alone time. Try to get some sleep, alright? You’ll need it when I come get you in a couple hours.”

Smoker had stood up and bowed a little when Steve looked at him. Steve wedged himself out of the booth, leaving, without another word.

The sisters looked quietly after them, waiting until the two men had left the place.

Julie turned her head to her sister, speaking as she was moving, “What’s your deal?” She laid a level look on Kerrie.

“Wow, hey. It’s good to see you too. It’s been a while, right?”

“Uh-huh.”

“Aren’t you glad to see me?” Kerrie asked.

“I see you all the time on my phone. I’ll try again: what’s up?”

“What’s up is that I have a gig later, and I was going to check in with you to see how you’re doing.”

“Right. And did you bring me the backstage passes I asked for?”

Kerrie tried not to let her sister get under her skin, blinking her eye slowly at Julie, pulsing her eye light slowly along, “You should really come see us play some time.”

Julie grinned, looking over the cyborg’s shoulder, “Not my kind of venue, sorry sister.”

“It’s not like that anymore. We get hired by much better places lately.”

“You mean _hired_ as in _paid_? How much better are you doing these days, compared to your old teaching job?” Julie was unconsciously tapping her fingertips on the table.

“I’m not talking money with you, Julie,” the cyborg said, struggling to maintain her open attitude.

“Unless you need to borrow some.”

Kerrie sighed, exasperated with her sister, then shook her head and looked away.

“Alright,” Julie shrugged, “Pleasantries aside, then. Why did you really show today?”

Kerrie was speaking quicker now, much less patient, “I got a bit of news for you, sister. I’m doing recon work now.”

“Yea, right. For whom?” Julie grinned.

“Mother.”

Julie studied her sister’s face. This was not something Kerrie would make up, or lie about. “How’s that work?” She was asking incredulously, “You’d have to get off your band’s rigorous touring schedule, wouldn’t you?”

Kerrie slowly detached her back from the bench, and leaned slightly over the table, folding her arms, “Do me a favor and drop the attitude already, Julie. I’m getting legit deployment hours in. On the record and everything.” She knew she could mess with people by varying the pulse of her purple light, barely noticeable to mammalian eyes, “I’m also training for more advanced operations.”

Julie was more careful now, processing more what she was told, “Like what?”

Kerrie named things quickly, “Counterintelligence, infiltration, extermination.”

This time Julie needed no extra time for responding, “You’re in training for my mission profile. Why would you do that?”

Kerrie smacked her gum, and grinned, “Cause you’re my idol, Julie.”

The older sister was unfazed, “Are you— are you training to fill my position?”

Kerrie took a deep breath, “Julie—”

Julie gave her a cold stare, pressing on, “Is mother training you to take my place? In case I fuck up?”

The cyborg shook her head, trying to decline, “Now that’s not—”

“Don’t lie to me, Kerrie,” Julie threatened, “I’m no idiot.”

Kerrie was properly frustrated with her failing effort of getting through her older sister’s thick skull, snapping now, “Oh yea?” She abruptly raised her hand and reached over, pressing down on the phone Julie held, and slammed it flat on the table, adding sharply “Then what’s this?”

Julie twitched, removing herself a little from her tablet, staring at her younger sister.

Kerrie had lost all patience, “Don’t think you can cover all of your tracks, sis. I’m aware you’ve gone rogue. And that means the rest of the organization better cover our asses in case you _do_ fuck up. Which is very likely now, considering you’ve been using _this_.”

Kerrie’s pointing black finger touched the screen, immediately bringing up a shiny icon. It was black and glossy, with a very simple, white, capital D in the middle, but part of the stem of the D was missing. The icon pulsed a little.

“Displacer app?” Kerrie asked sharply, tilting her head and poking her chin forward, “Really?”

“Oh, now you’re the expert all of a sudden?” Julie shook her head defensively, “Because you’ve got, what, fifty training hours in, you think you can criticize my procedure?”

“That’s not _procedure_ , Julie,” Kerrie said in a low tone, but furiously, “That’s straight up _gambling._ That shit is risking years of meticulous prep to take down the Loc-Nar.” Kerrie’s eye pulse had increased to a threatening beat, “Which we have a _fat chance_ of achieving now, Julie. Because your wonder boy has _fucking ketogenic inflammation_.”

Julie had leaned back, physically distancing herself from her sister, speaking adamantly, “He’ll make it.”

But Kerrie kept pushing, “You’ve put everyone on a schedule. Needlessly.”

Julie tried shaking her head, “I’ve been giving him a retarding agent.”

Kerrie gave a mocking smirk, “Oh, how considerate of you. Wonder boy won’t know then, right up until he _fucking croaks_. How long does he _have_ , Julie?”

Julie looked away from the cyborg, breathing in, then slowly out. Then she said quietly, “Days. Maybe hours? Hopefully days.” She was watching people dance in the middle of the room.

Kerrie paused for a moment, thinking. Then she asked, just a little more gentle, “And did you tell him?”

Julie kept watching the dancers, but crossed her arms, “He ain’t got a clue. About anything.”

There was another pause, and then Kerrie said, almost arbitratingly, “I wish you would have—”

Julie had recognized the tone and focused again on her sister, “Look,” she said coldly, “You weren’t there. Okay? You didn’t go. You don’t have to make stuff happen out there in the real world.” She leaned over the table, arms still crossed, “I’m being deployed here, day after day, ever since—”

She had suddenly stopped, and Kerrie knew her sister’s reasons exactly. Chewing on her gum, she pressed on, “Go on. You were gonna say?”

“Nothing,” Julie stared back at her.

Kerrie smiled, and nodded slightly, “You were gonna say ever since dad was killed.”

Julie waited a beat, then shook her head somewhat, “Shut up Kerrie.”

The younger woman sighed, putting her hands flat on the table now, “We could have made it happen, Julie. We could have accomplished this together.”

Julie had no answer for the cyborg.

Kerrie continued, “If you’d have so much as asked, if you’d be willing to show so much as a little faith in another person,” the cyborg was trying to make an impression on her sister, but tried a new angle for the first time, “Look. I’m not your baby sister any more. I’m ready to stand with you. I’ll fight for you.”

Julie just looked at Kerrie, waiting.

“But you’ve gotta let Eden go first,” Kerrie finished.

The cyborg had brought her news, and she had made her point. There was nothing more for her to say, and she was pretty sure her older sister could only learn the hard way. Maybe only in the hardest possible way. But Kerrie was also damn sure she’d never give up trying to make it easier, even just a little bit.

“Right,” Kerrie sighed, got up and fetched her keytar, knocking on the table, “Good talk, hon.”

She pulled her leather collar up, said “I’ll be in touch,” and started to walk away, hands in her coat pockets. Julie stared down at her phone, the black Displacer-app pulsing on the green screen.

“Wait a minute,” Kerrie said, coming back just a few paces, now wearing an intrigued expression, “Who’d ya snatch away from him?”

 

* * *

_No need for lookin back,_

_There's no more war to fight._

_Others are looking down,_

_You'll heal you're not alone._

_You've won the final battle,_

_It's time for coming home._

 

 


	12. His Second Circle

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Subject to the law of the 80s, I am pretty sure I am legally obliged to supply a minimum of synthesizer music with this chapter.

 

_Its you and me, meeting in secrecy,_

_As we confide, forget the world outside._

_I'm flowing with an electricity,_

_The night is filled with thoughts of you._

_As we move closer to each other eagerly,_

_You know I cannot wait, to rendezvous._

* * *

 

Ten feet by ten feet, and a single bed in the middle in dim green light, surrounded by dark blue metal walls smelling of copper, and a stainless steel toilet in a corner, no washing table, that was the meaning of the phrase ‘halfway cabin’. There was a telescreen on the wall above the bed, also, but it was switched off. It _looked_ as if it was switched off, to Steve anyway, who was pacing around his bed.

He didn’t know what to do with himself. He was aware Julie wanted him to get some sleep, but he had gotten stuck thinking. It was not good to be isolated like a caged animal. It didn’t feel right, not one bit.

Steve had his info skin down, going through some memory records. There was a tiny notification icon softly blinking in the corner of his eye. When he focused on it, he learned it said _Discharge Engine Soon_. Well, that chance had passed, so, great. On his second circle around the bed, the telescreen switched to a screensaver, depicting a tumultuous storm for Steve, as if seen through a window. That moment, Steve noticed a cord hanging from the telescreen.

It had a plug attached which seemed to fit inside his tentacle port. A tiny sign above the spot where the cord was inserting into the wall read _For your convenience._ Steve thought of Julie’s old space ship and walked over to it, held it in his hand, a little unsure, and finally, sighing, stuffed it inside his temple.

His info skin changed and presented to him the Google.hm landing page. He wanted to start surfing the web, but before he could, a pop up got in the way. The place must have scanned that he was by himself in the cabin, because it tried to get Steve to order a hooker. They looked somewhat like the person from the bar earlier, but they had changed notably, mostly in the rear. Steve dismissed the popup, after which a tiny amount of electricity shocked him in the skull, followed by a blinding flash.

“Fuck,” he murmured, rubbing his eyes, “I’m being read out again.”

Steve went ahead to google Kera’s vlog, and found it on YouTube right away. He browsed through her updates, but there were no fresh ones. Checking the dates, he learned that she had not updated since he had left.

He contemplated for a moment what felt safe to do next. Then, he reluctantly went to Kera’s facebook. Once he had reached the landing page, he wondered if what he was about to read there was going to feel okay, and if he should make her aware of his situation. He didn’t know what to say to her, or how. Then, he noticed a label on his eyelid browser.

The label read, _Notice: social media in alternate universes is view only._ Steve sighed again, realizing that he could look, but never get in touch, as if this was a needlessly complicated way of torturing him.

He decided facebook was useless and googled his podcast instead. It would be good just to listen to Kera’s voice, maybe it would help him fall asleep. So he downloaded an old episode and laid down on the small bed, listening to their jokes. If he would stop talking, he might be able to hear his friend talk, also, for a minute perhaps.

“So, you’re telling me that every woman I walk by, their vagina isn’t just shooting _fuck me_ scents at me, all of the time?” Podcast-Steve asked, making the Procrastinarian in the halfway cabin chuckle, murmuring “Asshole.”

Suddenly a loud beep resonated in the room. Steve stopped his podcast, looking around. There was the single beep again. He had no idea what was going on.

“Ugh, hello? Steve?” he heard a voice.

“Who’s this?” he asked defensively.

“Come-have-a-look-see,” the voice sang.

“How can I even hear you? Also, fuck off,” Steve barked.

“Come on, don’t act like a beardo. You won’t regret it, I promise,” the person outside said.

“I don’t even know _how._ ”

“Ugh, look around, dude. There’s _only one_ blinking light close to you. It should be yellow.”

Steve looked around the room. On the console next to the door, there was a thick plastic button that blinked yellow. “I won’t let you in. Julie said not to open the door to anyone but her,” Steve declared.

“It’ll only switch on the camera so you can see me. Check the button, they’re labeled.”

Half of the ink was chipped off, but he could still tell it read _View_. He pushed the heavy rubber button down. A screen he had not noticed earlier switched on next to the door, showing a grimy picture of the hallway, with lots of static interference, and a person standing in the middle of the frame.

It was Kerrie, “Coo coo,” she chimed, hands in her coat pockets.

“How did you find me?” Steve inquired, “There’s like, a thousand cabins on this level.”

Her face had a playful expression, “My sister uses a pattern for all of her passwords. She hasn’t kept anything from me since we were eight years old,” she quickly looked up and down the hallway, “Aren’t you going to let me inside?”

“What for?”

She smiled, “To talk.”

Steve checked the console, reaching out his hand. Another button said _Release_. He hesitated. But then he remembered there was only an empty room behind his back, and almost automatically, his finger pushed the rubber button down. Hard.

She looked a lot better without the static. Her purple lips and eye light shone in the dark hallway, “Thanks,” she said in a small voice, “Hi.”

Steve stepped aside to motion her in. When she walked past him in her heavy boots, he said, “It’s not much, but it’s all mine. I’d offer you milk and cookies, but I ran all out.”

He noticed she didn’t bring her guns this time as she got out of her coat. “I don’t care about the cabin,” she said, laying the leather piece on the floor.

Steve had a chance to look more closely at her now, squinting, “Did you change your hair?”

Kerrie looked surprised for a split second, reaching a suddenly self-aware hand into her hair. It had retained the midnight blue shine, along with the neon purple streaks, but it was now a very long, messy pixie cut. “I did, didn’t I?” She looked genuinely intrigued.

“Regular people remember those things,” Steve mentioned.

“I don’t care much for regular people,” she replied, “I wouldn’t have sought you out otherwise.”

“Is that a compliment?” he asked, hands in his pockets.

“You may take it as one.”

“Cut to the chase, Kerrie,” Steve said dryly.

She looked him straight in the face, “Okay. Did you have a thing with my sister?”

Steve involuntarily drew his lower lip inside his mouth and felt his face beginning to flush. He wanted to answer quickly, but there was a beat of hesitation, and he could tell instantly how the cyborg’s enhanced senses picked it all up, as she had started smirking. “Who are you, her legal guardian?” He walked over to the cot and sat down, already tired of standing up.

“Naw,” she said, “Just curious.”

“Then go ask her.”

“I did. She said no. But something’s off with this picture.” Just when she had said that, the telescreen changed and brought up a facebook post. It had Julie’s photo, not an especially good one, and her status update from eight hours ago. It said _So I finally get some alone time with this dude I’ve been keeping tabs on for years and turns out the guy fails me on casual discharge twice. #unfollow #NEVER MEET YOUR HEROES PPL._

“And here I thought you were perfectly acceptable, Steve,” Kerrie snickered.

Steve’s head was burning red, “That girl has no filter. Also, how the fuck did you dig that up? You’ve been in here for less than a minute.”

“I didn’t do anything,” she shook her head, “The room’s listening, Steve.”

“Fuck,” he said anxiously, “That’s quite the invasion of privacy.”

“Don’t be so self-conscious,” she said, walking over to him, “It’s no use trying to hide anything.”

He looked up at her as she stood before him, trying to confirm her intentions from just studying her face. She raised her hands from her sides. They were solid black, with a wild pattern of thin lines drawn all across, and looked tough as steel. But they felt like silk on Steve’s bearded face.

“What are you guarding?” she mused, “Why would you even want to? Nobody’s innocent.”

Steve watched her lean down, very slowly, so as to not make the lovable noob any more jumpy than he already was. He had an idea about what she meant to do, but let it happen anyway. With her eyes half closed, she let her lips sink all the way onto his, for a very careful, lingering kiss.

When she let go of his face she stepped back and fluttered her eyelashes, quickly speaking, “Oh, my gosh. Can I do that again?”

He opened his mouth to say something, but she moved with a speed he had not expected. Her legs came down next to his lap, and she was practically sitting on him, kissing him as if she really needed to all of a sudden.

Steve felt overwhelmed from her advances, and held her around the upper body, trying to get some space, surprised at the resistance she put up under that thin purple blouse of hers, “Hang on,” he managed, “What are we doing?”

She looked at him puzzled, “What are we—” she asked, touching her temple, “Let’s take a step back,” she literally got off of him again, “Look at me, Steve.”

“I am looking at you.”

“Good. Now _focus._ What do you see?”

“What kind of nonsense—” Steve blurted out, but then something changed. He felt pain in his body, his eyes were hurting again, and the view of Kerrie was suddenly disturbed by invasive clusters of pixels.

“Ah,” Kerrie sighed as if she had stepped into a waterfall, then laughed, “Focus!”

Steve could oblige her for a short moment, but then had to bent over into his lap in pain, shielding his burning eyeballs, while she produced a gasp for the low ceiling that was really not suited for polite company.

As he listened to her catch her breath, he rubbed tears out of his eyes, then had a fresh look at the woman, asking “Did you always have facial piercings?” He did not want to trust his own eyes anymore, “Did you just change? Was I just out? What the fuck is _happening_?”

Kerrie looked down at herself, running her black palms over her long legs, all the way up to her slender hips. Her leather pants were leather shorts now, and beneath she wore a pair of black stockings, with the lace top peeking out just barely from under the rim of her shorts. “This is _great_ ,” she said in a fervid tone, “ _You_ are great.”

She took only one long step over to him, getting a hold on the zipper of his gray jumpsuit, saying, “Don’t mind if I do,” beginning to drag it open, “Oh my gosh, are you _naked_ under this thing?” Her face was beaming, “You’re kinky.”

“Kinky? Your sister told me I don’t need any underwear!” Steve protested.

Kerrie had a good time with this, “And you believed her? That bitch is on fucking easy street with you, isn’t she? Now, lemme see about acceptable—” she tried to pull his zipper down lower, but he stopped her, earning her earnest surprise.

“It’s not-” he tried, “-about that.”

“Then what’s the matter, sweetie?” she said softly while removing streaks of hair out of his face that she had messed up a minute ago.

Steve stared at her, drew his lips in, not sure how to express himself.

“Oh?” Kerrie said after a while, “I see. I think I got you covered, though. Maybe this will help,” she unbuttoned her blouse and threw it in a pile with her coat. Her bra was pastel blue, and Steve noticed that although she had a very cute pair, her breasts were kind of small, and her lingerie had done most of the work.

“Kerrie, taking your clothes off won’t—” he began.

“Not my tits, dummy,” she chuckled, taking a seat across his lap again, her legs tightly enclosing his frame, “This.”

She had removed a pink plastic package from her pocket. With a quick flick of her finger, she made something appear, small and transparent like a breath strip.

He was very unsure about this, frowning, “What is it?”

“You wouldn’t wanna know,” she smiled expectantly.

“I probably shouldn’t mess with that shit then.”

“Oh, you _definitely_ should not mess with it, Steve,” Kerrie said, her gaze not wavering even for a beat. When he said nothing, she deliberately placed her thumb on his chin, and gave the noob the very slightest of pushes, ever so gently, after which Steve’s mouth opened with a hint of reluctance, but his tongue appeared anyway. Kerrie dropped the strip inside his mouth, let it merge into his tongue, and suddenly Steve felt like drawing in enough breath for the remainder of the week.

Things were fine. Not only that. Things were really, really good. Not a single thing outside of a ten by ten foot area could bother him at this moment. And the pretty girl who sat in his lap and watched every tiny change in his face, he really, really like-liked her, and the slow pulse in her alien robot eye was just the cutest right now.

Steve had no clue how long Kerrie had waited before she embraced and kissed him, but he thought that she was making out with him as if she really wanted to prove something. He felt like the guy she was making out with tried hard to show her a good time, and then it stood out to him, along another thing that stood out after all, that this guy was him, and that was real funny somehow.

His hands ran up on her pale back and he blindly snapped open her bra with a single flick of his hand and drew it off of her chest, throwing it away to the empty room. His hands went after the soft mounds of her breasts, getting a nice, firm hold of her, and Kerrie watched him as if she was perpetually excited about his next move. Steve leaned in and enclosed one of her small nipples with his lips, kissing her breast gently, and from below he could watch her lips part to award him a series of very encouraging, soft gasps.

She rocked her body into his lap with a new hunger, and Steve was convinced it was because she was aware of his outstanding excitement, as his member felt so very good when it rubbed against the softness of her leather crotch. Then, she stood up and just left him behind, with nothing else to do but watch her slowly peeling out of her shorts. Though she might have done it quickly, there was not an easy way to tell.

Suddenly she stood in front of him, and he had to tilt his head back to get a good look. She was still in the exciting pair of stockings, and a pastel blue pair of underwear, and he sat face to face with the triangular secret between her legs. He thought he picked up a faint scent, something pungent and familiar, and something he could really go for right now.

“Steve?” Kerrie smiled from above, “Take off my _panties_ ,” she urged emphatically.

When he heard her words, it seemed to him as if the telescreen was rapidly echoing every _panties_ _—_ _ugh_ sequence he had ever produced on the podcast— but perhaps they were just playing all at once. He took it all in with closed eyes, reveling in Kerrie’s provocative impudence, to suddenly rip open his eyes and growl, “I will fuck the shit out of you for that,” his hands suddenly clutching the rim on her underwear.

But she was quick and held him just there, simply requesting, “No— Teeth, please.”

He leaned into her, closing his eyes, his face gently touching the soft skin of her tummy, drawing breath like he had forgotten to do so ever since he left home, filling his lungs with the sweet scent of Kerrie’s appetite. Then the simple underwear which hugged her hips was yanked down, in between her legs, which she parted a little to let the piece fall all the way.

Steve was mesmerized by a perfectly triangular patch of thick dark hair greeting him. He leaned back in for some needy kissing, making Kerrie audibly draw in small amounts of breath every time his lips landed, until he lowered himself before her, and she arched her lower body forward to receive him, using two fingers to part her inner labia which had, all flushed and eagerly, come forth to reciprocate the favor of Steve’s lips.

She let him relish the throbbing glow of her insides only for a quick tease before she pushed against his shoulders to make him lay back in his cot. “I wanna do something to you that I learned on the podcast,” she announced.

She swung a leg over his body, so as to kneel on top of him, and slowly inched closer to his head, grinning, as Steve was drawn to the purple pulse in her black eye, glowing faster along with her heartbeat. When she almost towered over his face, he got what she was going for, and put a hand under his head for support, smiling back at her awaiting loins, which had turned into his entire horizon.

“You didn’t think you’d get my front side, didya?” she laughed, “I know what you need.”

She swung her other leg around, now kneeling next to him, and peeled him out of the jumpsuit as much as she could, before swinging her thigh across his chest a third time, now offering him her pale backside, and Steve was again looking at her glistening pussy, but it was below the tempting jiggle of her thick ass cheeks now.

A part of him meant to speak, but another part just wanted to stretch out his tongue for Kerrie, who had watched the noob over her shoulder, and used this moment as her excuse to lean back into Steve, burying him under her globes, wetting his face and very receptive mouth. She took a moment to coordinate, to wiggle her lower body in just the right spot, so the podcaster would find his happy place. When he had found it, she rewarded him with a deep hum of appreciation, and started rocking her pussy into his feasting mouth and jaw, in a slow and steady rhythm.

When his hands started messing and squeezing around with her soft butt cheeks, it occurred to Kerrie that she had managed to shut the noob up at last. She had discovered the way to revoke his privileges to complain and insist, for good. So she decided she had to make the most of this opportunity, and shifted her position just a little more, to bring her pucker into is face, and take advantage of his nose tip, if only for a tickling intrusion inside her back door.

One of Kerrie’s hands provided only a little service to his twitching rod, saving her other for the small knob crowning her moist lips, teasing it in sync with the double pleasures she received from Steve’s face. Standing at attention in front, she had to show care with his cock, as it had started leaking rich droplets of precum the moment she first touched it, telling her that the noob needed very careful handling.

But there was no such limitation on her own wants, so she deliberately increased the rocking pace she smothered the noob under, while quickening the small circles she drew over the sheath of her clit, beginning a wanton chant, “Yes-yes-yes,” as if either of them still needed encouraging, and ultimately, she would throw back her hair, gasping deeply, arching her slender back, and release her finish all over the noob, splashing his face with a thick load of her juices which, much to his delight, filled up his mouth and nostrils.

She rose from her seat soon after, leaving Steve behind in the cot, his eyeballs glazed over with the colors of the rainbow. He had to raise his head and peek past his throbbing erection to find her, pacing between the close walls, holding on to her head, the pale frame of her body dragging foggy purple traces through the wafting air, and tiny blue electrical sparkles shooting forth from under her naked feet as they touched the grimy iron floor. In a moment, she stretched her arm out, her hand almost touching a wall, and her fingertips threw blue flashing electrostatic discharge at the cabin walls.

“Fuck. Me,” Steve gushed.

He blinked, and she stood before the cot, “Steve, come here. Scoot closer please,” she urged again.

As he approached, she threw a light blue plastic square at him, surely feeling like a rubber to his touch. Not inclined to make a fuzz, he meant to rip the packaging, only his fingers gave him trouble about it. She appeared next to him, taking the condom away, quickly discarding the wrapper, and then, reaching between his legs with a smooth hand motion, put it on his tip and rolled it down all the way to the base of his dick.

Assuming it was his time to rise, he meant to get up, but found that her soft hands pushed on his chest, keeping him laying on his back, and atop him, she gave him lavish kisses, whispering in between seizing his lips, “I’ve got you where I want you.”

Her pecks traveled down his neck and chest, paced across his belly, lingered around the tip of his cock, and then she stood before the cot again to grab a hold of his ankles. Kerrie lifted them with care, and then parted his legs, a determined look on her face, to bring herself back kneeling on the bed, above her lover. Supporting those hairy legs with her arms, her skilled hand reached down once more to part her inner lips, getting ready for him, and then another black hand closed a firm grip around Steve’s cock, to start guiding his very acceptable tip into her entrance. Once they had found each other, she saw the noob beaming in delight, and lit up a smile of her own as she lowered her body down, onto his throbbing cock, allowing for his entry inside her, adjusting slowly to his intrusion, inch for inch.

When she had reached his base, she spread his legs apart more, holding him around the thighs, and now in a more comfortable position, Kerrie made her hips rock into Steve harshly, more demanding for his cock, allowing him to penetrate her according to her thrusting, watching him closely to see if he was getting as much pleasure out of her ride as he did. His heavy breathing and wide eyes told her to keep going, and she leaned in more, so as to come closer to his face, and watch him enjoy her fucking him rougher by the minute, as the sweat from her body started dripping over the body and face of the noob.

“You like this?” she demanded.

“I love this,” he gasped.

“You like my pussy? Like how my pussy fucks you hard?” she kept pushing, making the slapping of their bodies deliver the emphasis to her questions.

“Fuck I love your pussy,” Steve said harshly, “Give me all you got,” he screamed.

“You think you can handle all I got, Steve?” she grinned, proceeding to supply just that.

Kerrie watched with delight as Steve sought the bare ceiling above him, and then closed his eyes, no doubt desperately trying to prolong the thrills they were sharing. Kerrie felt her inner walls cling tighter to his dick, and felt her own arousal build up along with Steve, getting ready for another hungry release. She wanted just that, she just meant to go on, but her instinct eventually told her that she had not gotten all she possibly could out of the podcaster.

Slowing herself down gradually, starving poor Steve of her passionate swings, under his questioning look, she tempered her rhythm, and finally retreated from him with an elongated gasp, ignoring his pleading stares.

“Steve,” she panted, rubbing sweat from her brow, “What’s the fun in being with a virgin?”

“What?” he said incredulously, “What the hell are you talking about?”

“I know this has been bothering you, hasn’t it? So what’s it all about, then?”

“We’ve discussed this at length,” he pointed out, “It’s only a superstition, a shallowness of the mind. I can refer you to the episode later, if you _help me out first_ ,” he kept motioning at his glistening wiener.

“Did you ever find out whom you had this mystery conversation with?” Kerrie kept pressing.

“No.”

“Steve. You never had this conversation with anyone,” she declared.

“What?”

“It’s always been your question, hasn’t it? No one else’s. You’ve been wondering about things, haven’t you?”

He laughed, “That’s crazy. What does it matter anyway?”

“Is there any place left to go, Steve? Any dark continents still on your map?” she inquired, her words sounding playful, but her tone did not. She had walked over to her coat to retrieve a green plastic container she was playing with now.

“Steve,” she said now as if demanding a favor, “Focus on me again, please.”

He laughed, “Hey, I could hardly be any more focused on you.”

“No,” she shook her head, “Listen. And _focus.”_

Trying to find out what she meant, he stared at her frame and really tried to figure her out, when a fresh smack hit him in the brain, plunging him into seconds of darkness, struggling with a lot of pain, cussing, “Shit!” It was as if he heard her talk inside his brain, “What’s the fun in being with a virgin?”

Suddenly, out of nowhere, Kerrie yelped like a puppy, if puppies had the lungs of a fully grown woman and a digital vocalizer implant in place of vocal cords. The pain had left his body in a flash, and when his eyesight had returned, she knelt on the cot between his legs again, her body shrouded in a cloud of purple haze. She smiled, very content now, cooing, “That’s a good boy.” In one hand, she held a fresh condom, and with the other, she emptied the container with the green slime over his crotch.

“What are you doing? You have to talk to me, Kerrie,” he said anxiously.

“Sorry, Steve. I’m applying a lubricant to you.”

“I thought we were doing fine?”

“Oh, you have no idea how well we’re doing, you and me,” she said.

Kerrie reached in between her legs, way in between, way careful, and with a very small, very deep but pleasured moan, she retrieved something Steve had not paid attention to ever before. She gently rubbed herself with one hand, touching his crotch, letting Steve’s hot skin do the hardening for her new, long, bulging erection that Steve could now see standing out from between Kerrie’s legs.

“Kerrie,” he gasped, “I’m _not gay_.”

“Not that there’s anything wrong with that,” she quoted.

“What?”

“Steve, I’ve heard the Seinfeld routine out of you often enough on the podcast. I never said you were gay, no one did. I think what’s been happening to you is that you are now being more and more in touch with what feels good— with what _might_ feel good.”

She edged closer to him, gently holding on to his spread legs. He tried negotiating, “But I’m really _not gay_.”

“I know. So would you like to know what the fun is in being with a virgin?”

He meant to repeat his litany, but the word out of his mouth was, “Yes.”

“It is like planning a sneaky surprise for someone special, when you know you got this very important thing ready which they really, really wanted, and they have no idea you got it for them. It’s the gitty feeling you get in the pit of your stomach the split second before they open a door leading into a surprise party they thought would never happen. The fun is, _you_ know what’s behind the door, but you get to share _their_ excitement. It isn’t about you. It’s about taking care, and about paying attention, and about good preparation, and about allowing someone else to fall ass-backwards into a pool in their own back yard they had no idea existed.”

While she had been talking, she had slipped on her condom, and then rested his calves on her chest, with his ankles above her shoulders. She had also made Steve feel a warm sensation, a provocative tickle in a place where he had not felt it before.

“Would you like to see what I have for you, behind the door?” she asked teasingly, her tip gently knocking at his entrance.

She could see from his expression that he still had some doubts left, but he was thinking about her proposal, so she rubbed her tip across his pucker, very softly, letting him feel how slick the ordeal would be if he could overcome what was blocking out his desires.

“I’m right here,” she smiled, “Feel good?”

“I’m not g—”

“Ssh,” she grinned, putting a soft finger on his lips, “Nobody cares.”

He seemed to wait for her, expecting her next move, so she nodded at him, and while watching him closely, she allowed her hips to lean into him, just enough to get past the faint resistance his hole still put up only to save face. Steve gasped, but he gasped her name.

That made her smile, so she closed her eyes and got into a more comfortable position in order to give Steve’s butt a little more fierce of a push. His fingers clutched the cheap fabric of the bed, and his eyes would not leave Kerrie’s gently smiling face, his own lower lip drawn inside his mouth, while breathing heavily.

“Are you enjoying yourself?” she asked, and he noticed she kept it nice and slow, but each of her gentle thrusts opened him up a little more now, allowing her thick cock to go in a little deeper, stretching him out for her needs.

“I— I—”

“Take your time,” she gave him a little break, pushing in and out of him very slowly and gently, while rubbing his hard cock, beaming generously the whole time, “What are you still guarding?” she tried in a cheeky voice, then repeated, “Nobody’s innocent.”

It took Steve a moment, and then he noticed how much it had started bothering him that Kerrie had slowed down her thrusting so much, and he suddenly said in a low voice, “Fuck me.”

“What?” Kerrie laughed.

“Fuck me,” he demanded more loudly, “Fuck my ass!”

She shifted position, very excited now, and for the first time, there was a purple glow in both her eyeballs when she demanded, with her vocalizer changed to a metallic shriek, “You like my spike, noob?”

“I love your spike,” he moaned into the dark room, before the cyborg bent his legs all the way back to his chest to open him up as much as his body would give, and started plowing his deep asshole with a fresh appetite, driving him to a height of pleasure, his hard cock twitching, his body shaking with the bliss of a new thrill.

Once Steve had surrendered himself to the service she was willing to offer him, the room heated up from the glow of their sweating bodies alone, and language failed them, as they both started producing a type of grunt only lovers can decipher, and only for the lifetime of a short, desperate moment of desire. As soon as he had given himself to her completely, her boldness driving a new need into his insides, a new craving he was not willing to give up any time soon, she realized she had almost ridden him to his peak, so she greedily removed the condom from his dick. She tried to let him know, she tried to ask him to contain himself, just a little bit longer, just for her, but it was too late, his mind was already merging into the collective essence of Primus the Allspark, and in his last, best overload, Steve groaned like a bear as his cock turned into a fountain for man juice.

 


	13. Extrapolating

It’s best to wake up in one’s own bed, Steve thought. The morning sun was shining a blinding white light into his bedroom, and he thought his mattress felt a lot better than this. It was good, however, to hear the morning birds tweeting outside. On any other day, he would have been annoyed to be awoken by birdies, but today, it felt like a million bucks.

“Time to get up, Steve,” he heard the familiar voice of Meghan.

He groaned, lifting his hand, trying to shield his eyes from the burning sun, “I feel like I died last night.”

“Did you have too much drink?” Meghan asked.

She had turned up the ceiling lamp, also, for some reason. Steve longed to look into the face of his wife, having missed her for what seemed like forever. But all he could see above was her dark hair, falling over her shoulders, and the black outline of her shadow before the ceiling lamp.

“I missed you so much, honey. Do I smell coffee?” Steve asked.

“Don’t call me honey, you bastard,” it came back.

He fluttered his eyelids, “What? Ow. My head hurts like a _fuckin_ bitch,” he sat up in the bed, holding his poor aching head, “What did I do to deserve that kinda talk?” He looked at the woman standing next to the bed.

“You tell me,” Julie said, sipping on a thermos full of delicious, freshly brewed coffee, “You look like shit. Is this what happens if I try to give you a break?” she added for good measure.

Steve looked around the cabin, and without thinking, he added, “Where the hell’s Kerrie?”

Julie made a face like she had half a mind to spit her coffee all over him. Instead, she gulped it down, and then said slowly, “You have got to be _shitting me, Steve.”_

“Oh, crap on a stick,” he moaned.

She had her tablet in her hands in a flash, sweeping the room, “What did you do to my sister, Steve?” she demanded.

“Me?” He laughed, “What did _I_ do? Boy, you should have a little chat with _her_.”

“Oh my gosh, this is like fucking high school all over again,” Julie sighed, shaking her head, “The fuck is with your tongue?” she stared at his mouth.

Steve acted very self- conscious, “Nothing. I’m fine, really,” Steve tried, opening his mouth as little as possible.

“Tongue. Now,” she commanded, and he reluctantly showed her the inside of his mouth.

“Its pink! It’s fucking porky-pink, Steve! Did you take fucking cyborg amphetamines?”

“You tell me,” he snapped, mocking her voice, “Is your sister on drugs?”

“Don’t be ridiculous,” Julie snorted, “Cyborgs can’t get addicted to substances. They _can_ however, fall prey to obsessive behavior,” she added.

“I guess she was not obsessed with staying the night, then,” he said somberly.

“Never expect to wake up next to a cyborg, Steve,” she said, still scanning the room, “They don’t sleep. So, again, what exactly happened?”

He was getting angry at her, “Why do you need to know? It’s between me and her, okay? Or do you want me to draw you a picture?”

“It’s much more relevant than you think, Steve. But regardless, I don’t need your cooper—” She had switched the fluorescent light on her tablet on, now shining it across the noob, the cot and the room. Then she added, “Fuck. I’m not getting my deposit for this dumpster back, am I?” The entire place, especially the cot and Steve, was covered in thick white splotches. She quickly switched off the light, struggling to contain her gagging, “Her too? Kerrie?”

“What about her?” Steve shrugged.

“You come in’er?”

“What? Shut up!” he yelled.

Julie tucked her tablet away and reached down under the armpits of the podcaster and raised him off the cot, bringing his bearded face very close to hers, “Alright Steve, I’m not fucking around, okay? I never do. So be a lovable noob for me and answer me one question: Did you. Fucking shoot. Your Noob Goop. Into my sister. Huh?”

Steve struggled to get free from her grip, “Fuck, hell if I know! She took the condom away from me, but I wasn't anywhere in— she was the one— shit Julie, it might have gotten on her!”

“How. Much?” she growled.

“I dunno! A bunch? Probably a bunch.”

Julie sat him back on the cot and retrieved her tablet.

She texted Smoker, ‘Treat my sister like a new well from now on.’

It took all of a nanoclick for him to respond, _Lol wut? The shit happened?_

Julie ignored his questions.

_Did the noob get his dick wet?_

Julie still didn’t answer him.

_Shit I cant believe he got to her first._

Julie texted him, ‘I’m blocking your number.’

“Right,” she sighed, “Let’s go.”

“I hope you’re talking about going some place that will serve me coffee?” Steve insisted.

“No. Come on, get dressed. You have a busy day.”

“Busy doing what?” he demanded.

“I have to run a bunch of tests on you before I can pick your deployment gear. Come on, put your ruined jumpsuit back on, man.”

“Not until you promise to get me some coffee, Julie,” Steve pouted.

“Alright, fine. I swear to gawd, every time I team up with a dude,” she reached out under Steve’s arms and legs, and picked him up bridal style.

“Hey! You can’t drag me outside like this! At least get my clothes!”

“You had your chance,” she smirked, kicking the console at the door, opening the hatch, and walking outside into the brightness of the hallway.

As the two of them walked toward the level dispenser unit, merging into the bright lights in the corridor, Steve mentioned, “Your arms are very comfy, Julie.”

“I know, Steve,” she sighed.

“I still feel kinda funny, you know?”

“Yea, Steve, it’s those drugs you’ve been taking.”

“Okay, Julie." He blinked down his info skin and studied her just for fun, blurting out suddenly, “Wait a minute! Have you been discharging last night?”

 

* * *

 

Minutes later, Steve sat in an operation chair, his wrists and ankles strapped in, safe and tight. A silver diagnostics band ran around his skull, connecting to numerous electrodes, and through the socket into his tentacle brain. Many more electrodes clung to the bare skin of his exposed body.

Smoker lingered in a safe distance, leaning relaxed against a rubber barrel, and casually puffing vapor from his ENDS. He was watching Julie perform the procedure on Steve.

She stood facing a large console, just a few feet away from the cold chair she had strapped Steve to. At the center of the console, a large screen showed blue wave-lines that represented several physical statistics about Steve’s body.

Julie had put on a thin pair of glasses and was ready to start. “Now we’re going to run a few tests. This is a simple lie detector. I’ll ask you a few yes-or-no questions, and you just answer truthfully. Do you understand?”

Steve tried to sound as confident as he could, “Yes.”

And the console blew up in a violent explosion.

* * *

 

The hours went by quickly with a dozen strenuous tests and prep examinations for Steve. For the very last procedure, Julie had locked him in a gray, sterile room flushed with white light. Once more she had attached several dozen electrodes to Steve’s body, the cables connecting to a humongous computer looming at the ceiling. As soon as she had left the room, the rubber floor had started moving toward one side of the room. Julie had told him to try and stay in the middle of the rubber floor, and Steve had had no choice but to start running.

Julie was watching the naked Steve through a one-way-viewing wall, her arms folded in front of her chest, clutching tightly around a tablet computer. She gazed at Steve absentmindedly, who was jogging in the middle of the testing chamber, drops of sweat raining down from his flushed skin.

In this moment, Smoker stepped next to her side, going, “Wait a minute, Julie. What’s the point of this test?”

Julie stared blankly at the man in the room, “No point. I just thought he could stand to loose a little weight.”

Steve’s exercise routine was starting to have an effect on Smoker, “His jiggling is almost hypnotic.”

“Yes,” Julie agreed, her voice very relaxed, “It’s like a lava lamp.”

 

* * *

  _Always lookin back,_

_Afraid of everything I see._

_Should I cross the line?_

_Who is waiting there for me?_

* * *

  
Her hand firmly on his shoulder, Julie guided Steve into a large hangar bay, Smoker in tow, his four hands crammed into several pockets. The hangar was multiple football fields long and wide, but hardly higher than Steve’s house used to be back home. She had stuck him into a shiny blue suit, littered in silvery contact discs, several of which had already cords attached. Among the few aliens and space ships which populated this place the group walked in silence, until they had reached a ship that vaguely looked like a Skycrane. It featured much longer and sturdier side arms than normal, stretching out to the left and right, imposing like lion paws. Over the cockpit, it featured a set of bulky, intimidating rocket launchers, and instead of a rotor system, it had six elongated, silvery glistening rocket engines mounted to the back. Fastened beneath the sturdy arms was a large compartment which had at least the dimensions of a medium-sized caravan, which also featured an open entry hatch.

“Alright,” Steve cheered, “Looks like we’re traveling comfortably this time.”

“Oh I will,” Julie said, giving him a level look, “But I’m afraid, since we lost my ship, I had to borrow my mother’s, and sadly, I’m not allowed to bring friends.”

“You’re kidding,” Steve snorted.

“Nope,” she said while looking upward, and a long metal pole lowered itself out of the ceiling. It had a head-sized metal ball at the end, which sought out Julie’s retinas. Then, it produced a quick, colorful flash and promptly retreated back into the ceiling.

Steve watched all this, going, “So what about me? Will you strap me to the roof?”

“That’s a swell idea, I’d love to,” Julie smirked, “But since we’re off to face the Loc-Nar—”

“—after quickly rescuing Meghan—” Steve insisted.

“Uh-huh. In any case, you’ll last longer if you’re protected. Pun not intended, but enjoyed, now that it’s here. So we’ll just suit you up,” she explained.

A confirming beep sounded through the hangar bay, after which the floor opened and birthed a large table, its surface covered with a black smart screen. Julie walked over to it, put her phone on the surface, and the table lit up, offering a multitude of data arrays, graphs, and command menus.

“Well, let’s get started then,” Steve sounded impatient, “Either we do the photo shoot or I’m getting out of the bathing suit.”

“Funny,” Julie said without smiling or looking at the noob, “I can’t tell if you’re being annoying or productive. But regardless,” she made a long swish over the table.

Behind Steve, another utility chasm opened. From the hole in the ground, a mighty device rose, an iron and steel booth, with a figure-shaped content inside, illuminated by a faint blue glow only. It slowly rose until it faced Steve eye to eye. With a sharp hissing sound, the front opened and retreated back into the floor, until only an empty shell in the shape of a person remained. It looked like a metal carapace, intended to cover a humanoid, but on the array it looked like a cracked open lobster carcass. And it reeked.

“Ew,” Smoker said, stepping closer, examining the suit down to the small nooks and crannies, “It’s not completely clean. Again,” he covered his face with one of his arms.

“Oh shit,” Julie said, holding her breath, quickly pushing commands into the table.

“Cleaned from what?” Steve asked.

Smoker walked a couple paces back, reaching out an arm and pushing Steve back with him, as a new pole came down from the ceiling, an optical lens at the end. “Cleaned from the last guy,” Smoker said, watching how a bright ray of violet radiation jumped around inside the open carapace.

Steve watched the light show, and after the pole had retreated, the suit was free from any smell except a faint note of ozone. He looked at Julie, doubtfully.

“Okay,” she nodded, “You’re up. Hop in.”

Feeling more than a little unsure about the proceedings, he did as was suggested to him anyway, clumsily climbing inside the empty person-shell. The sturdy material felt cold at first, even through the smart fabric of his bodysuit. Right away, he could feel how the chromatic plates wrought into the tight material connected with touch-activated interface plates, creating a warm sensation and a slight tingle all over his body.

“Oh gawd,” Steve yammered, “Julie, this feels funny already, I’m getting all hot and bothered.”

Her expression showed a little concern, but she paid him no more attention, instead kept connecting tough metal tubes to several ports on his suit, “Just give it a minute. The tentacle brain will adjust your sensation.”

Indeed, in less than a minute, Steve had calmed down. His body felt relaxed now, and cool, “This is much better,” he sighed when Julie made the final connections.

“Don’t relax too early,” Smoker smirked.

Steve searched Julie’s eyes for any signs of trouble.

“He’s referring to the final adjustment, Steve,” he could tell she went into lecturing mode again, “You see, I’ve just strapped you into a very intricate— and shall I say expensive— piece of technology called a ‘Mark Seven Humanoid Tactical Solution’, or M7-HTS. If you had to steer this baby with sheer brainpower, it would take you all day to make a solid attempt at picking your own nose. That’s why it comes with its own A.I. To help you command the suit.”

Steve was not at all happy, “What, another one? How much shit can you possibly cram into my brain, Julie?” he protested.

“Oh dear,” she smirked, “You will like this one. The tentacle brain will feel like Microsoft’s Clippy compared to this babe.”

“What will it feel like exactly?” Steve asked, uneasy again.

“Dunno,” Julie shrugged, “It’ll adjust to your personality. Might take a while. Might also make you feel a little queasy. Sorry.”

“Alright,” Steve tried to breathe, “Just tell me when you’re about to start, okay?”

Julie looked up from the table, where a yellow light had started flashing a minute ago, “Oh, sorry, Steve. It’s already running. Just be cool, alright buddy?”

“Aah, fuck you!” Steve yelped, “How can you do this to me again, _shiiit_ —” Steve suddenly felt a cold sensation at his head, and then _inside_ his skull. The metal helmet had, unbeknownst to Steve, started to stick out a long probe that had already started penetrating the port in his temple. Now it suddenly connected with his mind, sending a physical shock through his body, making him twitch as if he had just reached into a power outlet.

“Gaah!” he went, somewhat panicking, “I can’t see, it switched my vision off!”

“It’s all fine, Steve. It will accommodate you, and extrapolate a suitable interface for you to confer with. Trust me, it feels funny now, but once it’s done, it’ll fit you like a glove.”

Steve bucked up, his limbs twitching inside the half-closed metal armor. This was precisely why Julie had strapped him down, so he could not escape even if he wanted to. She supervised the adaptation process calmly, Steve crying out on the array, but she made sure the curves on her monitors showed trends into the correct directions.

But the energy intake caught her attention. Then Smoker had a look, mentioning skeptically, “That’s an odd amount of power for a simple interface arrangement. How complicated is his humanoid brain architecture?”

Julie’s tone was somewhat skeptical now as well, “Not very much at all, that’s the thing. I’ve never seen it spike like this before.”

“ _Aaaagh! Fuck, Julie, what’s happening!_ ” Steve screamed as if falling down a well, his voice metallic and distorted, his eyes wide open, dull and empty.

“Adjust power! More power, Julie!” Smoker yelled.

“I’m on it, sheesh,” she grunted, moving her fingers higher up on the smart table.

A loud and heavy smack echoed through the hangar bay, making people turn around as Steve’s head was yanked side to side in his open helmet, and yellow sparks shot out of the tentacle port. His mouth opened, and he started producing a violent, alien noise, like static coming from a broken radio. Then, his whole physique shook severely for seconds, before his body went dead suddenly, switched off like a vibrator. Black smoke rose from his temple now, his tongue hung out, and his eyelids were closed.

Julie checked her table. It listed Steve as _online_ and it also listed the suit and the new interface as _online_ , while the process tracker said _complete_ , but below it also said _69 errors recorded / copy to clipboard?_

“I hope you didn’t break him,” Smoker said as they were walking over to Steve, who hung his head, not looking at anybody.

“Steve, can you hear me?” Julie tried.

“Uh-huh,” Steve groaned, sounding distant.

“Are you okay?” she asked.

“No.”

Julie and Smoker exchanged a look.

“Tell me what’s wrong,” Julie tried again.

In a barely audible breath, Steve murmured, “I’m not alone in here, Julie.”

“Oh,” Julie said quickly, thinking, “I think that might be okay. What you perceive as company might be the suit interface.”

“I hate you, Julie,” Steve groaned, “The suit hates you too.”

“I think you’re just saying that now, aren’t you?”

“No, we’re serious,” Steve whined.

“Regardless,” Julie sighed, “It should be able to communicate with you now. Can you listen to the suit’s A.I.? What’s it telling you?”

Steve clenched his jaw as if it was hard to make this happen, “Yea, I think I can. I can hear it talk. Oh gawd Julie, I hear someone else talking in my own head!”

“What’s it say?” she demanded.

“It says: _I’m offended!”_

 

 

 


	14. Buffering

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Did you just hear right ... ?

_Seeing straight ahead,_

_Face my enemy._

_Knowing I might die,_

_Could be destiny._

* * *

 

Her fingers frantically swishing and tipping on the black surface in front of her, Julie tried to get Steve’s suit back under control. The complementary front plates of the five limbs had just snapped shut with a resonating bang, and Steve had clumsily tumbled forward, away from the array. As Julie tried to stabilize the interface governing the suit’s movement, the breastplate closed with a screech, and all of a sudden Steve was completely enclosed in metal, save for his head, the helmet still open. It looked like he was staring, panicked, out of the gaping maw of a steel dragon, one tooth already several inches deep inside his skull. The suit itself was all black metal, except for extra plates protecting the gantlet, tibulen and aft areas, which were colored white.

Steve seemed to get enough control over his arms to hold on to his head, bowing, going, “Julie! Make it stop! Get her out of my _fucking head!_ ”

As Steve stumbled further away from the metal array, Julie made a decision, “I’m manually activating the outside projector, hold on.”

At the side of the black helmet, a round, green nook suddenly flashed with light, and kept pulsing forth green light while it projected a tall shape, about three feet away from Steve. Julie and Smoker saw only the back of a green woman, clad in tightly fitting armor with a wide collar and several reinforcing plates littering the outfit. She wore a long loincloth like a skirt for some reason, and for a belt buckle she had the cut-off front of a skull which looked real, but not human. Her right hand ended in five vicious, elongated metal claws instead of a hand, and her entire appearance was a projection coming from the M7-HTS. This meant her eyes were green, also, but it also meant she was not technically a ginger now. Smoker and Julie watched her from behind, noticing that her hair was long enough to reach the small of her back, when they first heard her voice.

“—amn son of a _bitch!”_ she thundered, her hand, closed into a fist, shooting forward to hit nothing but the air. But Steve’s suit made a sudden move, his legs bending, lifting the pedes off the ground, and his right servo hitting him square in the breast plate.

Julie and Smoker watched the woman’s punch hit Steve, lifting him off the pedes, and as if in slow motion, the two of them mouthed silently _oh fuck me_ as Steve flew several feet backwards, before crashing noisily into the floor.

The nook on Steve’s helmet still fully animating her, the woman approached Steve, making long steps in his direction, talking to him, “You’re getting me only _now_?” she said furiously, “Who do you think you are?”

“Okay, override,” Smoker told Julie, “That was enough.”

“I can’t,” she said, “It’s still applying updates,” pointing to a tall bar that was titled _Reasonability Buffer_ , which decreased very slowly, and was still well over eighty percent.

The projection stretched her arms out, her palms gripping thin air, but the suit chassis lifted Steve back to the pedes, making him stand as if he was on his tippy pede-appendages, and she made the suit animate his body as if she was shaking him by his collar, “ _I_ am the _veteran_. You are the _noob_. Why did you not— _get me?_ ” With her last words, her arm lowered and then shot up, launching a deep punch against Steve, hitting the chest plate again and throwing him back several feet more, flying through the air.

The buffer bar on Julie’s desk had not fallen under fifty percent at this point.

The M7-HTS slid over the hangar floor with a screech and met a wall, hitting Steve right in the head, the only part of his body that was currently not protected by armor plating and several layers of electronic pain buffers.

The green woman with the long hair towered over Steve, then lunged down, motioning as if she picked him up, and the suit matched her movement to make it look as if she really did. Once she had the poor noob with his back against the wall, her projection approached him close enough so it looked like her hands were actually touching his breast plate. Her face was flickering very close to his. The noob searched her angry expression for mercy.

“I’m your friend,” she said in a small voice, “How could you not have come to me?”

Steve felt as if he had not seen Kera in ages, “Don’t be stupid,” he smiled at her, his face bruised, blood running from his nose, “I wasn’t going to ruin your life. No _fucking_ way.”

“I could’ve helped, _Steve,_ ” she said fiercely.

“You’ve got responsibilities,” he shook his head.

“Don’t you give me that _shit!_ I wasn’t gonna let you down, you idiot!” Kera hit his chest plate with her animated hands several times, making the suit buckle as she did.

“Can I say something?” Steve asked, not realizing that his voice was now shaking.

“Oh, please say something for once, you asshole,” Kera said, tears of anger streaming down her face.

Suddenly he was sobbing, “I’m so glad you’re here, Kera.”

Without another comment, Kera made her animation reach around his neck and moved his servos up around her disembodied shape, tightening his bodysuit under the armor to make it feel as if they were hugging tightly. She didn’t say anything, just held him in place for a minute.

Some distance away, Julie and Smoker were observing, and he asked, “What are they doing?”

Julie gave him a look, raising a long index finger to her lips in silence. Then, she nodded at the reasonability buffer on the smart table. The two of them waited a while, watching the last bits of the column trickle down, while Steve and Kera stood pressed against the wall in the distance, quietly sharing a very tight, very long hug.

Once it had reached zero, Kera let go of Steve.

“They’re ready,” Julie said, nodding in their direction, making Smoker follow her as she started to walk over.

 

 


	15. Blast It

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Kera and Steve were further apart than ever before, but now they are a lot closer then they ever could have imagined, literally being inside of each other. Ew, not like that, though.

 

_Well I'm not alone,_

_My brothers by my side._

_Never fight to lose,_

_Never compromise._

 

* * *

 

Julie watched Steve rub away some dripping snot and blood from under his nose when they approached, and from his expression she could tell he had more questions.

“Did you have to hit him in the nose?” Julie was upset with the implications, “It’s gonna mess with sensoring.”

Kera studied Steve’s face as if it was the first time again, “I didn’t hit him in the face.”

All three of them were looking at the noob, examining his skull. The blackness on him had grown, replacing much more of Steve’s skin now. It covered about a third of his face, but much more around the back of his head, where no hair could grow any longer. It had also grown over and into his eyeball, which featured no more visible iris or pupil, and was just a solid yellow, waxy orb by now. Unbeknownst to Steve, he had stopped seeing through it minutes ago, and Kera had compensated by feeding his brain sensory information from the tactical solution. Being super secret best friends, she would have never kept his state of health a secret, but her programming kept her from divulging any information that had a chance of upsetting the battle prowess of the current inhabitant.

“How the hell can she be here?” Steve asked.

Kera had turned around and stood up straight, her hands on her hips, “I’m from the internet, and I’m here to help,” she joked, looking from person to person, “While your brain is busy running your own body, I’ll help you operate the M7-HTS,” she detached Steve from the wall, made two steps forward with him, and then started doing some jumping jacks, the suit following suit with her every move.

Steve didn’t like the bumpy ride too much, “That doesn’t tell me anything, though. I still don’t get it.”

Julie sighed, “The suit interfaced with your mind, just like your tentacle brain did, but the suit is supposed to discern a type of user interface that you’re most comfortable with, and in order to do so, it extrapolates a specific personality from your mind.”

“Yea,” Kera said in a breathy voice. She had put her hands back on her hips, but made Steve do a moonwalk in the background in the meantime.

“Kera, my love, can you stop it with the shenanigans for a nanoclick?” he asked.

“Fine”, she said, eyes rolling, “Ask your boring questions.”

“Why,” Steve had some trouble forcing his words out now, “Why did it choose Kera? Why not,” he swallowed, “Why not Meghan?”

“I don’t know,” Julie answered, shrugging, looking over at Kera’s shiny green form.

Kera’s eyes started glowing brightly as she accessed the memory record shared between her and Steve, and she explained, “During the extrapolation process, some information about Meghan was protected from access due to emotional repression, so the process moved on to a personality profile which had less of a psychological toll at present,” Kera’s eyes stopped glowing when she had finished.

“That’s understandable,” Julie offered.

“Just do me a favor and stay out of that record, okay, Kera?”

“Sure,” she said a little too quickly.

“You’re reading it as we speak, aren’t you?” Steve sighed.

Kera’s green eyes glowed again, “Yup.”

Steve sighed once more, “Moving right on, then,” he looked at Julie, “That’s disappointing though. It means she’s not really here, right?”

“Uh, yes I am,” Kera interjected while still catching up on Steve’s personal history, “I’m based on everything you know about me. All your memories are necessarily based on sensual input you gather about me every time we meet, and how your brain processes this input. You better believe it’s me.”

Steve gave a questioning look to Julie, who made a vague hand motion, “Even if you’d put projected Kera and organic Kera in a room with one another, you wouldn’t be able to tell any difference, Steve.”

“Except that one of them is green of course,” Steve had raised an incredulous eyebrow.

That made Kera stop going through his tentacle brain, “Oh, am I? Oh crap, I better change then,” looking down at herself, a bright shower of light washed over her person, and the result was natural looking Kera in jeans and a t-shirt, but still with the super long hair.

“What’s with the hair?” Steve asked.

“Just trying something out,” she said, moving her fingers through the long streaks, acting as if she was putting a hairband in, which promptly appeared in her hand, allowing her to gather them into a ponytail.

“You know, I can still tell you’re a hologram,” Steve said, reaching out with a servo, cutting right through Kera’s face, making her flicker.

“Stop it,” she hissed, slapping him in the face with that same servo, “And I’m not a hologram, I’m an interface projection.”

“Ow. Makes all the difference in the world I guess,” the noob complained.

“Hold on a minute now,” Kera said, her eyes squinting as she looked from Julie over to Smoker, as if she had seen the tall, four armed, gray alien for the first time, “Even Chris? You two knuckleheads did get _him_ involved before coming to _me_?”

Smoker gave Julie a doubtful look, “Who’s Chris?” He murmured.

Julie looked down at the screen on her phone, which showed Kera’s profile and her statistical information, “It’s the Christian name of the invisible producer,” she explained, “But I wouldn’t have expected this from an interface.”

“Scan’er,” Smoker said.

In this moment, a new sound could be heard throughout the hangar bay. It was a dull, elongated moan, like that of metal which was put under a lot of stress. Dirtball station itself seemed to be aching. All around the four of them, people stopped to look at their devices, their attitudes changing, reaching from interested to upset.

“Something’s off,” Smoker said, his face worried.

“Relax,” she said, “It’s only a level two alert signal. But have a look at this,” Julie said, holding up her screen so Smoker could see Kera’s readout.

The screen showed a disturbance scan of the noob and the veteran. Steve was like a shiny beacon, wavy tears and ripples all around him, and his physical form glowing in all shades of red and orange in an otherwise cool blue environment. But the unusual thing was that Kera’s outline was glowing almost to the same extent.

“She’s a new well,” Smoker said slowly.

“When she really shouldn’t be,” added Julie.

“So it’s really her, then?” Smoker asked incredulously, “The veteran?”

Kera was getting impatient, “I _told_ you guys. Didn’t I just say that?”

“Yea,” Julie confirmed, “It’s her. He pulled her over. That’s crazy. Maybe the suit was a bad idea.”

Steve was still rubbing his nose, “Oh, so now that made it a bad idea all of a sudden?”

The aching from the Dirtball got louder, and crashing noises were mixed in now. People around the four started running, either to their ships or to the hangar exits. The lights went out, and the emergency lighting went on, flushing everyone in shades of cold blue.

“What’s wrong?” Kera asked.

Julie checked the messages on her phone, “The station is experiencing,” she hesitated, but then read what the screen said anyway, “Structural failure.”

Smoker snickered, “No it’s not.”

“You better believe it,” Julie said.

Smoker appeared to slowly change his mind, “Did you account for her presence?”

Julie shook her head and turned around to go back to the table nearby, the three of them in tow. She brought up a bar graph featuring five different colors. She explained the chart to Smoker, Kera and Steve who were not sure what they were looking at.

“This is Steve, this is me. Then it’s you, Kerrie and finally,” she nodded at the new person, “Kera. Even if I didn’t plan for her to show up—”

Kera made a face at that.

“There’s enough leeway,” Julie pointed at the frame around the bar, which was yellow.

“Ehem,” Smoker went, “Aren’t you forgetting someone?” he nodded at Steve.

Julie stared at Steve.

“What?” he said, “What about me?”

“Oh shit,” she had just remembered something, her fingers tipping in the disturbance impact for another person. The graph immediately went from yellow to orange, and started glowing. It also started beeping, and red glowing letters appeared below it:

_CAUTION_

_FAILING PREMISE_

The Dirtball ached once more, and the few remaining people in the hangar started panicking. Julie put on a nervous expression for the first time, “We have to take off and go to the planet. Right away.”

“You can’t do that,” Smoker protested, “These two jokers have six hours of training ahead of them. I won’t sign off on you taking an M7-HTS away without proper practice, no way.”

“Put it on my tab,” Julie said. She pushed a final sequence of buttons, and the smart table started sinking back into the floor, very slowly. Then she started walking over to her new ship.

“Cut it out with the cockiness already,” Smoker yelled at her back, “That’s gross misconduct!”

“I’ll take the rap,” Julie declared.

“Good! Because I’ll be putting in a complaint, okay? Maybe I feel like putting in another for—” he hesitated, giving Steve a look, “About this other thing you fucked up!”

“Do what you have to, Smoker. Kera, close the helmet!”

Steve meant to ask a follow up question, but Kera shut the upper and lower parts of the helmet with a resonating, metallic snap. Under the white face plate, Julie had mounted a long, white piece of kibble, made to resemble his beard. His optics were just two horizontal, rectangular slits emanating a blue glow, while his vocalizer glowed in the same light, but was round. It gave him a metallic voice, screeching like a toaster on crack, “You still didn’t tell me how I’m supposed to follow you!” he protested.

“Show him, Kera,” Julie said while walking away from them, and just that moment, Kera activated the jets that were built into their pedes, making the suit hover in the air. She made her own projection hover gently next to him.

“Oh shit,” Steve gushed in his metallic voice, “I’m like fucking Iron Man over here!”

“Steve, that’s offensive,” Kera objected, “We’re like the fucking Iron Person, okay? Pay a little attention.”

Smoker had followed Julie, who had reached the entry hatch and wanted to board her ship, and said, “Hang on.”

“Go ahead and file your report,” Julie just said, stepping inside, “I’m doing this my way.”

“Oh, I’m aware. I just meant to say,” he tried.

“What?”

“I wanted to say thanks.”

“Oh my gosh!”, she made a face, “Don’t you fucking thank me, Smoker. Seriously,” she pressed a button, making the hatch close, leaving him behind on the hangar bay floor. When she had reached her cockpit to hang up her small, naked plastic troll with the red hair, Smoker had already left, or gone invisible, or whatever.

Julie’s ship booted up and slowly turned, hovering over the floor. A little distance away, Steve was floating in mid-air. Meanwhile Kera had switched off the outside projector, but pointed a digit at a hangar bay door now, “It’s closed, Julie. I’ve put in a request for take-off, but there’s no answer from tower control,” her voice crackled over the intercom.

“So blast it,” Julie said, absentmindedly flipping switches while the consoles surrounding her were flickering on.

“Whoo-hoo!” Steve gushed as Kera opened their bulky servos, revealing a set of two cannons in each one. They aimed them at the hangar doors, and taking turns, each servo blasted a few shots out at the door, obliterating the sturdy metal into dust under the sterile sounds of the energy cannons.

There had been no time for the hangar bay to properly decompress, so the sudden pressure exchange blew out all the air into space, including the other ships, people, Julie’s ship and Steve and Kera.

“You’ve received the coordinates?” Julie asked, once they were out.

“Sure did,” Kera confirmed.

“Let’s go then,” she said, plotting a course, and speeding up her ship alongside the suit.

Leaving behind the massive station, Julie observed a monitor showing the Dirtball. The lower part of the sphere had ruptured and now showed a massive gash. Ships were evacuating everywhere, and chances were the whole place would succumb to frenzy in a matter of minutes. Suddenly, one of the screens to her left started beeping, flashing _Incoming call / Irene_. Julie gathered her thoughts for just a moment, and then accepted the call.

A head under a large helmet appeared. It covered everything but the lower part of the face. The eyes were hidden under a wide screen, which was being switched off now and retreated under the helmet, revealing the face of a woman. Julie noticed she had just gotten a haircut. It was colored in shades of gray with white streaks, and she had died the tips black again. Julie hated that.

“Julie,” Irene said.

“Hello, mother.”

“What’s happening on the Dirtball? What’s your location?”

“We just evacuated due to the Scholar causing a critical amount of disturbance. His impact is a lot worse than we calculated. The station is lost,” Julie explained.

“And him?”

“Stable.”

“Stable?”

“Yes,” Julie confirmed, “I’m using an M7-HTS.”

“Affirmative,” Irene said, pressing buttons to bring up some intel on the screens in front of her, “I’m sorry I cannot report any new information regarding the status of the woman. We could not even confirm her point of entry.”

“She’s accounted for by the level of disturbance we have measured, anyway. But I am revoking priority status from Meghan from here on out. We have to focus on the Scholar.”

“And what of the weapon?” Irene asked.

Julie looked out of her cockpit, staring at the suit housing Steve and Kera, “Never mind that now. We’re running out of time. I’ve set a course for the planet.”

Irene’s face tensed up, as a pause delayed their status report. Julie looked up at the screen.

“Affirmative,” Irene finally said, “Please report back after completion.”

Now this gave Julie somewhat of a pause.

“I’ve had an unexpected chance to speak to Kerrie,” she said. Irene looked straight at her, “She informed me of her new training schedule.”

Irene thought carefully about what she would say, and then tried using a concessionary tone, “I’m running a business, Julie.”

“I understand that. Consequently, I’m surprised to hear you’re presently expecting mission success. You wouldn’t be patronizing me, would you, mother?”

Irene had a sincere expression on her face, “I’ve never done that. I’m not doing it now. Look,” she spoke carefully, “You’ve made a number of choices during the course of this operation that I certainly would not have. But I trust your judgment completely. And _of course_ I expect mission success.”

Julie looked down at a control screen, adjusting her course, “Affirmative.”

“Julie,” Irene said, and her daughter looked back at the screen. “I love you. Please take care.”

Julie smiled softly at the screen, “Thanks, mom. I love you too.”

They nodded, and the call was disconnected.

 

* * *

 

_Taking on a world,_

_Our differences aside._

_Never surrender,_

_Never say die._

 

 

 


	16. Serling: Obsolete

 

The escape of the mercenary, the veteran, and the noob by way of an obliterated hangar door was but a spec in the sensor complex of the mother brain managing the Dirtball on the day of its demise, as countless ships forced their way out of the failing celestial habitat in the same style, scurrying away, nimbly, yet panicked, like cockroaches flee an upset of their hideout. The colossal sphere moaned and ached as if its failing structural integrity brought it a kind of perverted pleasure, as its metal alloys ever so slowly gave in, and, finally, the internal framework of the massive orb succumbed, and the deepest of gashes tore its once tightly guarded surface asunder, surrendering, rashly, its most precious treasures indiscriminately.

The once densely populated hangar bay where Steve had forced his most recent well into the balance of Julie’s world was now void of people, of any activity, and air, replaced by the freezing vacuum of space, and bathed in the somberly blinking rhythm of the emergency lighting. Behind the rupture Kera had brashly torn for the trio’s bold escape, their engine exhausts echoed in the distance: a red glow emanating from Julie’s spaceship, and a deep blue fire trailing the Chosts’ making headway in their hapless tale.

Retreating from the hole in the wall, the scene pans out, as all color begins dripping away, and from the right, a person in a dark pantsuit comes strolling into the view, her back turned, fists inside her pockets, watching the lights shining after the trio die in outer space. Once she is satisfied with her observation, the chapter is freshly suffused in shades of gray, and she daringly swivels around on a heel, revealing to us a ruffled blouse in a light color, together with the longed after face of Meghan.

Her dark hair holds a beautiful shine even under the dim lighting in the forsaken hangar, and now, as she’s facing the audience, her hands come out of her pockets to form a clasp, as she straightens her shoulders, raising an eyebrow, to offer her spiel, “Lost in a land of nightmares, a universe seemingly designed to break down those who dare enter, you have found two unlikely allies. Unified by a headstrong attitude and a desire to be in charge of the situation, what rips Julie and Steve apart is trust and faith in each other, still, and rightfully so. She, not a hero in the idealistic sense, but in the sense of a person who gets a job done no matter the cost, is a crusader who does not care if others deem the prize of her zeal holy, let alone decent. Unbeknownst to her, the encounter with the unlikely noob has already transformed her, but as much as she progresses, her world must fall apart— disappearing into an abyss of _obscurity_. He, on the other hand, a tortured soul trapped inside a fever dream, mustering all his fervor against the odds, proving his devotion to rescue-,” Meghan paused a beat just to show her mocking grin, “-a damsel in distress. And so, tossing all second thought to the wind, the lovable noob has chosen battle, which brought him to the fringes of annihilation fast, and along he took the reality apparent to him. But unlike Julie, the idol in a collapsing world, you find a world contained in him, now both doomed, both now inevitably falling apart to vanish in the maelstrom of— _disturbance_.” She pauses another beat to give emphasis to her final blow, “You have seen the border between the conscious and the subconscious eradicated, you have watched Steve cross the line from perception into memory, you have witnessed him turn emotion into observation, and you have seen him crossing the zones: awoken from a fever dream, to live inside a nightmare tragedy.”

Meghan unlocks her hands to show them back to their pockets, cocking her head sideways, reaching her final point, “With a premise rapidly failing, and a crossover heading nowhere fast, the question whether the Chosts will save the day lingers.” White spots have started flashing across the scene, and the image of the woman seems to flicker, her voice getting harder to understand, “If they can stomach the sucker punch of clumsy metaphor, they surely will. But can you?”

Meghan lets her hands free, turning to her right, and starts walking towards the left of the frame, which will follow her steps, but also retreat from her. Her target is revealed, a black piano, sitting idle in the middle of the hangar. At one side of the instrument sits, presented like a sculpture of art, Kera’s alien microphone, and Meghan positions herself flanking it, touching it carefully with her hand, offering you, “I shall see you after the trio is done.”

And with that, she turns her back on the audience and sits down on the piano bench. One hand resting on her thigh, she slowly raises her right hand to the keys, and as the frame is blackened, Meghan keeps playing a sequence of four notes, over and over again.

 


	17. Soft Landing

_You're seeing now a veteran of a thousand psychic wars,_

_I've been living on the edge so long, where the winds of Limbo roar._

_And I'm young enough to look at,_

_And far too old to see, all the scars are on the inside._

_I'm not sure that there's anything left to me_

* * *

“And if you pay attention to the change in Sherlock’s expression from this frame onward, after John mentions that she’s his date, you can clearly see that Benedict’s acting has changed, and he now behaves very differently towards John and the woman. And if you’re asking yourself now what exactly the change in his approach was, we’re getting a very clear answer about 28 seconds later, in this scene, when John is getting seriously frustrated with how intrusive Sherlock is behaving, and—”

“Kera,” Steve interrupted, “Seriously, we’ve had a notification for an incoming call from Julie since forever,” he tried to sound as serious as possible while trying to convince Kera to take a break from her analysis, “Can you please relinquish comm control and just listen to her? It just _might_ be important.”

Kera, not thrilled about the interruption, sighed reluctantly. “Alright, we can take a break for now. But we’re coming back to this later.”

“Oh dear me,” Steve sounded drained already.

When Kera switched the still frame showing John and Sherlock exchanging meaningful glances off, the two of them realized they were hovering in orbit around a planet, with Julie’s ship in spitting distance. So Kera finally maximized the comm screen, making Julie appear in a window in front of them.

“The fuck’s wrong with you?” she angrily snapped, “I’ve been waiting for twenty minutes!”

“We had something important to discuss,” Kera declared.

“This is not a game you guys,” Julie insisted, “I’ve sent you a new set of coordinates, detailing our landing zone on the planet. Once we’re down there, follow my lead and avoid any quick movements, are we clear?”

“Sounds easy enough,” Steve confirmed.

“Yea, well— don’t fuck around, guys,” she disconnected, her ship floating away, and entering the atmosphere at a gliding angle, a shining glow of heat appearing on her ship’s frame.

As the podcasters started their slow descent through the atmosphere, Steve wondered “So why does Julie keep calling this place _the planet_? Doesn’t it have a name of its own?”

Kera was checking the files quickly, “No— Doesn’t seem to have a more sounding designation. Well, until recently it was called—, hang on—. Nope, can’t find it. They just classify it via the star in the system.”

“And?” Steve probed.

“Oh my,” she sighed, “You won’t like it.”

“Come on, I’m dying here,” he laughed.

“Well, the star is called Meta, and this is the fourth planet, so it’s called _Meta 4U_.”

“Oh my gosh,” Steve sighed, “Little on the nose.”

“Yuuup.”

“What’s the U stand for?” Steve pressed on.

“Says _uninhabited_. It was assigned _Federation Assigned Ketogenic Killzone,_ level three, only recently. They dropped the old name right after. We’ve entered the troposphere by the way,” she casually mentioned, adjusting their course and velocity to smooth cruising.

Below them was a thick cover of gray and green clouds, blocking their view. When Steve ran a sensor sweep across, the screen told him it wasn’t clouds, but pollution.

“This entire place is toxic,” said Kera, sounding disconcerted.

She adjusted the angle of their flight again, diving deeper, passing through the opaque clouds of toxic haze. Below them, a craterous, rugged planet surface appeared, reminding them of Mars, but less shiny red and more glossy orange. The whole place was a hot, dry desert as far as the eye could see.

“The fuck are we supposed to go? What are we supposed to find here?” Steve wondered.

“You’ll know in a bit. We’re approaching the coordinates Julie gave us.”

On the horizon, a gray mass appeared, and Kera switched the jets on their pedes to a turbo boost shortly, making a much quicker approach. The gray mass turned out to be a cluster of tall, craggy spikes. Kera drew up a quick height measurement, telling them that thy were at least 150 feet tall each. As they approached, they learned that the cluster of sun-baked, dusty remnants was really forming a vast landscape.

Steve looked at the ground below them apprehensively, “Shit, I’ll get lost in there.

“I won’t loose you again. Don’t worry, Steve. I think we’re almost there now,” she kept checking their position constantly.

They flew closer to the center of the cluster, noticing that many of the spires were hollow inside and accessible. Kera lowered their flight gradually while reducing speed, so they could have a look at the canyons that ran between the spires. Down at the very bottom, a vast battlefield presented itself to the noob and the veteran.

Once solid roads lay dusty and abandoned, most of them torn up and devastated, with massive wrecks littering the intersections, some of them piled up into makeshift checkpoints and small forts. They saw the remnants of once powerful vehicles, now slashed and burned to pieces, some of them still smoldering, others emanating poisonous gases.

“In the grim darkness of the far future, there is only war,” Steve quoted, laying a filter over the display in his helmet, scanning for bio matter.

“Steve, no!” Kera said quickly, but it was too late. She had meant to keep the noob from scanning for humanoid remains.

“It’s everywhere,” Steve declared in a low voice, as his entire screen flushed in red colors, signifying traces of organic matter, “Oh my god, I think I’m going to be sick,” he gagged, switching the blood filter off, “This place looks like it once used to be great. What the hell happened?”

“I dunno,” Kera said neutrally, “We’re here. This is where Julie wants to meet.”

“The longest of the fucking alien cocks. Naturally.”

Kera landed the suit in front of a tall alien structure, letting their pedes do the walking now. They were slowly approaching a massive structure that once might have been covered in sheets of glass or metal, but whatever it had been, it was now blown out. Mostly a skeletal frame was left to scrape the sky, almost reaching where the toxic waste clouds floated. It looked like the ruin was flipping a massive middle finger at, well, everyone who still cared.

The podcasters climbed a long stairwell leading up to the main portal, taking in an appalling scenery of carnage and destruction around them. Skeletal bones littered the path to the tallest spire, some of the remains still clad in armor resembling riot gear, but not all of them, by far. Once they had reached the main portal, they noticed the inscription above the massive entry.

“I think I have an idea what might have killed them,” Steve mentioned, reading what it said before Kera walked them inside the spire.

Above the tower entry, in massive golden letters, the inscription said _Glory_ , but the portal was mostly torn down now, so the rest of the motto was missing. But someone had smeared a graffiti in blood in front of the first word, so now the inscription read _VainGlory_.

Steve and Kera had entered a large lobby area, which was completely burned out and covered in soot. In the middle of the room, someone had bothered to pile up a stack of humanoid remains. Kera didn’t mean to go closer, but Steve was steering their pedes there anyway.

It was a mistake, they saw the large antennae too late. They had come too close, and the large insect creature inside was getting defensive. With an alien screech it shot forth from the pile of corpses, lunging at the tactical suit, releasing a stinking cloud of defensive gas simultaneously.

It was the first time Steve really got a taste of his enhanced systems. He felt as if he could watch the thing shooting at them forever, and he took his time analyzing the body structure of what looked like a cockroach with an acidic cloaca for a gaping maw. Then, he revealed the blaster cannons in his servos, taking aim at the piece of shit while it was still in mid air, and released a barrage of sterile energy boosts at the thing, obliterating it into a cloud of green stomach fluid and yellow bile, which fell across Steve and Kera like rainfall.

Once the moment had passed, Steve realized that the perception assistant of the suit had made it appear to him as if time was actually passing more slowly when a threat level was detected.

“That felt pretty good,” Kera laughed.

“Yea,” Steve admitted, “Did you do that?”

“Y’know, not to toot my own horn here,” she laughed, and Steve shared a moment of amusement with her, while she went ahead and heated the outside of the armor to burn off the acidic remains of the alien cockroach.

When Steve looked around more closely, he noticed that all around the base of the tower, a series of escalators were mounted, a dozen in total. They ascended upward into the spire, in a circular fashion, forming a swirl of escalators, disappearing into the darkness above.

“I’m guessing we’re supposed to go up, right?” Steve mused, walking over to one of the charred escalators, noticing that their bases were completely molten, “But not using these.”

“Never mind,” Kera said absentmindedly, starting their jets, making the friends glide slowly upward into the dark tower.

When they ascended, the holes in the skeletal structure around them became gradually larger, as if the tower had been attacked fiercely from the outside in the past. Through one of these gaps, Steve noticed Julie’s skycrane ship approaching. She flashed the headlights once when she noticed them, then hovered upward along with them.

 _Meet you on the top floor_ , she texted them, _Be ready for anything_.

There was a second of delay.

_And I mean anything, okay? Try to keep it cool, noob, alright?_

Kera texted back, _Still here, you know._

 _I know,_ Julie replied _, I don’t have to tell you._

“If you guys are so chummy already,” Steve mentioned, his tone slightly sour, “Maybe she shoulda gotten you in the first place, huh?”

Kera gave a fake sigh, “I’ve been waiting so long for you to acknowledge that, Steve, thank you.”

“Fuck you guys, seriously,” Steve grumbled.

When they had almost reached the top floor, Julie joined them on a platform. She vaulted straight over from the hatch on her ship, landing on her feet. Then she quickly touched a button on an arm computer, and her ship closed up and disappeared out of sight.

She had changed into orange and brown utility garb with a noisy camo pattern. A bulky SMG was now strapped to her thigh, and her razor sword on a belt across her back. Her long, dark hair was tamed into a ponytail, and she wore large, mirrored sunglasses which covered most of her face between her nose tip and her forehead, but Steve could not see any side pieces holding them up. When Julie turned her head though, he noticed that the glasses were plugged into the tentacle port at the side of her head. She had also finally lost the boots and thigh protectors.

There were three of them now, although there were only two humanoid frames. A rickety staircase in front of them led up to the top floor. It was visible from here that the roof had been blasted away, above them would only be the dull sky.

“We gotta go up there,” Julie said sincerely, “Are you ready?”

“Ready as I’ll ever be,” Steve spoke audibly now, his round vocalizer producing metallic shrieks while lighting up in cold blue.

“One more thing,” Julie said in a low voice. She put her hand to her neck to move some stray hair away, showing something to Steve and Kera. It was a red imprint in her skin, looking like a sword with the hilt at the top, and two half moons facing it on each side.

“So you’ve got a tattoo, alright,” Steve shrugged, “Can this wait, I’m kinda anxious right now. We’ll show you ours after. Promise, Julie.”

Julie smiled at the noob, but looked sad, “I’m afraid there probably won’t be a later for me, guys.”

Kera shook Steve’s head incredulously, “How do you mean?” they both asked.

“I’m wearing the Tarrakian crest into battle. There’s an ancient pact of protection, and I’m indebted to it. Long story short, I probably won’t make it, you guys.”

“Oh come on now—” Steve chuckled, his vocalizer making scratching sounds.

“No, seriously,” she insisted, “There’s prophecy and all. Female heroism and whatnot. I’ll have to do the right thing, the ultimate sacrifice, y’know? You two, however-” she paused only for a nanoclick, “I need you to have my back, alright? And whatever happens, remember, I’m your friend, okay? Steve?”

“Sure—” he said, doubtfully. Kera was silently scanning Julie’s facial features, revealing a huge amount of tension below the surface.

“Right guys, here goes nothing,” Julie said, advancing on the stairs.

Kera and Steve followed her quietly. Apart from a large, incredibly grimy platform, this floor was empty. Across from the three of them, a titanic figure of stone sat on the floor, stony knees drawn to its chest, arms wrapped around. The naked, gray giant was truly a piece of cyclopean architecture, but where you would expect the single eyeball, a gigantic orb was set into the stone, colored in a dull shape of brown.

In the middle of the room, a sharp stake was erected. Tied to the black stake was a person. The ankles were chained down at the bottom, and the wrists were chained at the top, stretching this person out.

“What is this freak show?” Kera whispered inside their helmet.

“I’ve come to face you! Reveal yourself, coward!” Julie thundered, the gravity of long forgotten millennia in her voice weighing down her challenge.

The person shuffled slowly, obviously hurting, around the stake, trying to face the team of three. She had messy, streaky, dark hair, and seemed too weak to speak. She raised her tired eyes at the combatants.

“ _Meghan!”_ Steve’s vocalizer glitched as he screamed at the top of his lungs, trapped inside their helmet. The cyclopean sphere trembled, an orange glow burning from the inside now, and cracks rippled through the skin of the titanic statue.


	18. OOC

_You ask me why I'm weary, why I can't speak to you,_

_You blame me for my silence, saying it's time I changed and grew._

_But the war's still going on dear,_

_And there's no end that I know._

_And I can't say if we’re ever,_

_I can't say if we're ever gonna be free._

* * *

 

The stone cyclops rose from his fat arse, pieces of gray stone peeling off the skin, falling to the floor, throwing up clouds of white dust. With a dark growl, it rose to the feet on a pair of skinny legs, showing a set of two equally skinny arms with flabby fat under the bones, and a protruding, round bulge for a stomach. It stood slightly stooped over, the orange orb vibrating, its skin wrinkly and leathery all over, in a dirty shade of orange. Between its thighs, a tiny appendage swung back and forth as the creature moved, just barely noticeable.

And Steve paid no attention to any of this, darting across the floor to get to Meghan.

“Hold on a _minute_ now, will you!” A grave voice echoed, and a strong beam of energy shot forth from the orb, hitting Steve and Kera in the chest plate, throwing them right back to where they had stood.

“I don’t know what you are, bitch, but I will—” Steve screeched, trying to have another walk over.

“Oh please,” sneered the cyclops, now standing on two feet across from the trio, “Make another step forward and I’ll melt your precious wife into goop. Come on, make my day, _Scholar_.”

Steve’s helmet snapped open, making his face appear between the metal fangs of the armored solution, “What did you _do_ to her?”

Meghan recognized Steve only now. It was the only familiar thing in this nightmare. Steve saw that she was in one of the t-shirts she used to wear to bed, and a simple pair of black pants. Smiling weakly, her torn lips vaguely made the motions to say _Steve,_ without a voice. Steve had to watch it in anguish.

“Me?” the orange beast chuckled, “I didn’t do nothing to her. She’s like, only a four.”

Steve looked over at Julie, who looked about as agitated as he was, “Really?” he asked.

“Told you,” Julie said.

“But hey,” the orange sphere sneered in a sinister tone, “You can have her back, I don’t care. On one condition, Steve,” the cyclopean beast chuckled deeply and then demanded in a challenging tone, “Remove her _pants_.”

That moment, Kera switched on the outside projector, buzzing into form at Steve’s side, going, “Steve, no.”

When Meghan saw how Kera appeared, out of thin air and in jeans and a-shirt, she was convinced that none of this was real, speaking weakly, “You’ve grown out your hair.”

“What’s the matter?” Julie asked, not comprehending.

“I thought you were a _fan_ ,” Kera hissed in her direction.

Steve paid none of the women any attention, making a statement that suddenly sounded forced and wrathful in a very dangerous way, “ _I. Can’t._ ”

“Oh shit, please, no,” Meghan whispered.

“What?” Julie demanded.

“Don’t you see what’s happening to him?” Kera yelled, “Steve? Don’t you go there!”

“Oooh,” the Loc-Nar teased grimly, “And why is that, my lovable noob? Let me know just why you can’t remove her _pants?_ ”

“Because she’s not wearing any _pants!_ ” Steve roared, now seized by bare fury.

“Oh shit,” Julie said quietly.

“Yea,” Kera echoed, “Steve! Listen to m—”

But the massive Loc-Nar insisted, growling like a beast, “Oh but she’s obviously wearing pants, Steve, isn’t she now? Just go ahead. And take them off. What’s your problem, pray t—?”

Steve interrupted, screaming at the top of his lungs, “ _Leggings! AIN’T! PAAAAAAAAAAANTS!”_

The orange cyclops wallowed in the willful insistence with perverse enjoyment, “So you’re saying you won’t do as I say, noob?” The sheer greed for the wrath of the podcaster made him spittle and drool all over the top floor.

“You can suck my dick, bitch!” Steve cried, revealing the blaster cannons inside his servos, aiming at the talkative orb.

“Whelp,” the Loc-Nar said, crossing his arms and shooting forth a bright yellow ray from his core, hitting the stake, and making the trio watch as Meghan’s flesh was melted off, turning her into a puddle of smoldering goo.

Steve flew into a frenzy, shooting up into the air, to unload an unforgiving barrage of cold blue death over the Loc-Nar. The evil god of ancient eons turned into a fountain of splattering blood and yellow bile, his many acidic fluids running into a puddle, which slowly melted a hole into the floor.

But as Steve landed back on his pedes, his teeth clenched, his face overrun with tears of acrimony and sorrow, the cloud of blood cleared, and hovering in mid air, with the ugliest sense of superiority, was the Loc-Nar, reduced to the glowing orb, but appearing even larger and somehow more threatening.

“You’re still here,” Steve spoke in a hateful voice, “This place, this entire fucking universe, can go to hell now for all I care,” he tried to keep his composure just to talk straight, Kera working hard in the background to stabilize his mind as much as she could, as Steve produced a laugh of desperation, “I won’t be bothering anyone for much longer now. But this I demand to know: _why_ did you have to take my wife? Why did you not just kill _me_ right away? Why did it have to be her _also?"_

His question was met with silence, while the massive orb pulsed and hummed, centering itself in the middle of the floor. When it finally answered, it sounded almost indifferent, “Oh, but I didn’t, my lovable noob.”

“What?” Steve hollered.

“I said: I did not _take_ your wife. It wasn’t _me._ ”

“Then who—”, Steve demanded.

“Who _could,_ dumbass?” the Loc-Nar ridiculed him.

Steve used his enhanced brain capacity only for a moment, then looked up. His gaze was centered on Julie. “You,” he growled.

“Steve, I—”

“Shut up!” Steve screamed, “You've been asking for my _trust!_ All this time! It was all _dirty lies!_ Why did you do this to me?”

Julie opened her mouth to start talking, but he could not hear her any more. He heard a smack in his head, the loudest and most painful yet, as his mind itself finally seemed to give in. His vision became distorted, static interference took over, and the clarity of all thoughts was gone. Steve dropped to a knee, supporting his head on a servo fist, trying to fight the pain that had taken a hold of his soul. Even now, clad in a futuristic death machine, he was made feeling powerless and defeated. Kera switched the projector off and jumped back inside.

“Steve, I’m here for you,” both women said at the same time.

The Loc-Nar laughed an ancient, superior laughter, taunting the defeated podcasters, but finally taking aim at the Tarrakian, “Look, Julie! I broke him! I broke your champion, and it was _easy_! Because you’re all losers, and you’re jealous! What _good_ is your head canon, huh? Nobody gives a fuck!”

Steve was made feeling hopeless and broken, headed for a dark place. He longed for someone he could trust, a real friend who would not let him down. _If only,_ he thought, _If only I had a real friend with me_.

Between him and Julie, a chaotic cluster of pixels appeared. They grew upward and downward, starting to form a tall shape. Steve focused on it with what strength he had left. He thought of a person he’d want to have around right now, someone to come help him in the darkest of times. Slowly, he managed to increase the resolution. Then he gave the figure colors, black and blue, bringing the tightly fitting armor back. A head with long, strawberry-blonde hair appeared, and a hand made of vicious blades. A wide collar grew around her neck, and a loincloth with a skull for a buckle. He increased the resolution to full, and standing there, on her own feet, in the flesh, was Kera.

The projector was disabled. She was gone from his head. He had brought in the real deal. Kera zeroed her gaze in on Julie and said in her darkest tone, “You will pay.”

Her hair went flying from a storm of static, she stretched out an arm, a frantic cluster of pixels appearing in her hand, in a flash forming a silver sword, tall enough to reach her shoulders. Kera gripped the hilt with both hands, and swung it over her head, advancing on Julie.

“Oh, I’m liking this!” the Loc-Nar taunted, “Plot twist! Cat fight! Me-ow!”

Julie had quickly detached the razor sword from her back and held it in front of her in a defensive fashion, “Cut it out, Steve! Call her back!”

“This is what she’d do for me,” Steve said, burning with rage.

Kera swung _Spiderbane_ over her head, landing a crashing blow on Julie’s sword, who was still retreating from Kera, making protective swings against Kera, who was just hewing down her sword furiously on the mercenary.

“Steve!” Julie implored the podcaster, “This is _so_ out of character for Kera!”

“I don’t care!” Steve screamed.

“Yes you do!” Julie did not want to give up, “You _always_ do!”

“This is how it ends,” Steve said grimly.

“No!” Julie hollered under the deadly howl of her razor sword, “It ain’t!” Her movements had become quicker all of a sudden, and Kera froze in position as Julie let out an earth-shattering scream.

The Loc-Nar started laughing the most dirty laugh, and then Steve watched in horror how Julie’s sword cut through Kera’s chest and came out her back. With resonating clatter, _Spiderbane_ had left her limb hands, and hit the floor. Kera slumped over, turned motionless, and Julie reclaimed her sword, when the fan fiction veteran fell to the floor, void of life, blood trickling from her nose and mouth, running over the dirty platform in crimson streams.

Under the Loc-Nar’s hideous laughter, Steve produced a bone shattering wail, throwing his fists at the noxious skies. Fiery sparks flew out of his interface socket, and his eyes produced a blue glow, forming a flickering cloud of sparks and lightning around the lovable noob. The doomed planet itself started to shake, as interference and disturbance around the remaining three increased to a thunderstorm of madness. This forsaken place was next to be ripped asunder by Steve’s tortured mind, with Julie and him trapped like mice.

The Loc-Nar had prevailed, “How is your weapon doing, Julie? It did nothing! It means nothing next to _me!"_

Steve stared at Julie, ready to give up. She tried making an approach into the frenzied cloud of lightning, but he said with a disembodied voice, “Don’t bother.”

“Steve,” she spoke distorted, distant, “You’re wielding the cannon.”

“Yea, I’ve heard about enough of that shit by now,” he said, defeated.

“This is your own advice, Steve. Listen to yourself. You’re wielding the head canon. You’ve got a whole universe at your disposal. Use the universe.”

Julie had all but disappeared in the static disturbance which engulfed everything but Steve now, and he would be next to be torn into oblivion. He looked at Julie, and a transparent green face flickered across hers for a beat. It was Kera’s. She whispered to him a familiar line. “You didn’t like how the story ended. So tell yourself a better one.”

 


	19. Psychic Wars

  _You see me now a veteran of a thousand psychic wars,_

_My energy is spent at last, and my armor is destroyed,_

_I have used up all my weapons, and I'm helpless and bereaved._

_Wounds are all I'm made of!_

_Did I hear you say that this is victory?_

 

_Don't let these shakes go on!_

_It's time we had a break from it,_

_Send me to the rear!_

_Where the tides of madness swell,_

_And been sliding into Hell._

_Oh please don't let these shakes go on!_

* * *

 

The lovable noob, podcaster extraordinaire, had retreated to the depths of his mind, the only center in the whole of the universe which had not fallen apart yet. The events of the past days passed through his thoughts, and he analyzed them step by step. He looked at all the small details, at the many inconsistencies, at the roads not taken, and then something changed fundamentally. He saw that the individual pieces did not properly match up with one another. He saw that there was another path, a different way to understand the events, with a different meaning, which rang a lot more true. A version that felt _more right_. And then he realized something.

_This was not how it had happened._

Steve had to start from the top. He rewound back up through the atmosphere of Meta 4U, back through the hangar, past the Dirtball, the Smiley ship, Julie disappeared behind his reassembling door, and then he watched himself walk backwards into his bedroom, drops of sweat seeping into his skin, he laid down, and finally his eyes closed, very slowly.

 _This was not how it all came together_.

Steve now assembled a very different version. There never was a murderous Displacer in his house, it had been Meghan all along. At first, Julie did not want to take her, until she saw her shoot a rifle, then she was allowed to come along. Julie had brought the skycrane from the beginning, so they had enough room to pick up Kera, too. The ship had enough shielding, so no one needed an extra tentacle in their brains. Inside the smiley ship, it was Steve who shot eyeballz, and Meghan who blew a hole into moray face with a shotgun. And it wasn’t him who had kissed Julie on the main bridge, Kera had. There was no need for himself to help find Smoker, because Kera had had the correct instinct to reveal him in the bar on Dirtball station. And that night in the cabin, he had not spent it with Kerrie, but with all four women. Most importantly, no one was dying— the five of them had gotten ample training in. Oh, he kept the power suit of course, added one for Meghan, but kept everyone else as they were, especially Kera in the outfit that never won until today, wielding a version of _Spiderbane_ which was welded out of solid-fucking-ceramite.

No one was damseled or fridged. They had joined forces, and they had tracked down the ancient evil relentlessly, leaving no middle ground, no places to lurk, and were finally facing off at the top of the tower.

Steve opened his eyes. They were all there, all five of them, forming a circle around the tall orange guy in the middle, weapons aimed at the evil of days gone by.

Julie stood at his side. She raised her mirrored glasses up into her hair and gave him a soft smile, and she looked so very tired, “Thank you, Steve,” she said, “Now I can fulfill the Tarrakian prophecy. My destiny.”

Steve held her back with a bitarlueus, and a smirk, “Quote it for me.”

She was a little confused, “Okay, well. It says: The ancient evil reforms in each generation. And the spirit of time is transferred across the universe, to a new defender, who will contain the power of evil for another generation. And a new Tarrakian is born to protect the next.”

Steve looked generously at Julie, and cocked his head just a little sideways in a playful way, “That’s the old one, Julie. The new ancient prophecy says you don’t have to do this alone. It says when the ancient evil takes form in a new generation, you’re free to find common ground with others and rally support, and fight as one to overcome the reaction. And no one has to offer their heroic sacrifice. See?”

Steve tried to stick his neck out some from the armored suit. On the side of his neck, in blood red, he bore the Tarrakian crest. Julie looked from him to Kera, and Meghan, and Smoker, who all did the same, revealing the crest, inked in under their skin.

“Sure, evil will raise its ugly head again, and challenge each generation anew,” explained Kera, “But if we march forward together, with each time we fight back, we can try and give the next generation a little more of an edge. Until some day, we might not have to fight anymore,” she smiled.

“Oh, how sweet,” the Loc-Nar mocked sarcastically, “Shall I step aside for a minute, so you ladies can have your Bechdel moment?” The five of them focused hateful gazes on the orange threat at the top of the tower, “Did you forget about me? I’m the narrator! I’m the producer! I control the narrative, and nobody cares about your cheesy fan fiction! _I won! And you’re just a bunch of sore losers!”_

Steve and the others had heard about enough. They all raised their guns in unison, firing.

But Steve stopped the footage before their combined payloads could hit the Loc-Nar, and rewound everything just a moment. It now turned out Kera wore a baby carrier, with her daughter in a tiny power armor sitting in the front. The little girl held a cute set of child-sized Uzis, raising the muzzles at the Loc-Nar, and the five adults did as she did. She was sucking on a heavy metal pacifier, shaped like an orc skull with crossed bones, but now she spit it out to say her first words.

“ _Fuck you!”_ Kera’s daughter cheered, and the six of them started firing at the ancient source of evil, obliterating it into dust, causing a huge explosion at the top of the tower, and their worlds were saved once more.

 


	20. Epilog

“Then what?” Kera asked. She was focused on the screen of the latest Microsoft Surface Pro model. The footage was frozen now, showing a loading animation. They had been waiting for about a minute already.

She and Steve sat on his front porch, as the weather was unusually nice for an evening in this time of year. It must have been slightly over seventy degrees outside, which was way toasty for a day in May. She unconsciously checked her watch, it wasn’t even seven yet. She had about a half an hour before she had to start getting ready to pick up the kids. It was nice to have both her daughters over for the weekend, something that she tried to make happen as often as possible, but it had become increasingly harder to accomplish lately.

“Nothing,” Steve said, frowning, “It keeps getting stuck afterwards.” He stared at the bulky device which was connected to the Surface Pro. The smaller one had a tiny screen of its own. Currently, it showed a photograph of Steve where he was clean shaven and was making a face, blowing up his cheeks. Beneath the picture it said: _Procrastinarian: online_ and _Status: operational_. But his picture was grayed out, and an overlay showed a loading animation here too.

“So what did you do?” Kera asked.

“Well, I unplugged him and rebooted—” he began.

“Steve,” Kera drew out his name, making a face, “It’s _conscious._ Ew.”

“Yea, well,” Steve said, agitated, “What am I supposed to do? I paid good money for this, and I want him to _fucking work_. Oh and by the way, it’s not an _it,_ it’s a _he_. Most definitely,” he pointed at the grayed out photo of the Procrastinarian.

“I can’t call it that,” Kera said somberly, looking away, rather admiring what Steve and Meghan had accomplished recently in the front yard. The Mock Orange shrubbery they had worked on for years was in full bloom, and a soft breeze carried over their sweet fragrance. Kera took a deep breath, and took a sip of coke from the huge cup in front of her.

Steve made a facetious smile, “You still have a problem with that? Listen, he’s a genuine copy. He’s an actual person—”

“Not under the U.S. Constitution it’s not,” Kera interjected, batting her eyelashes at Steve.

“—Yet. Okay? It’s not an actual person in the legal sense _yet_. But just you wait.”

Kera chuckled, shaking her head a little, looking back at the garden, noisily sipping coke.

Steve picked back up where he left, “Anyway, the fucking storage doesn’t work anyway. I thought I could talk to this guy—”

“And haven’t we all been waiting for _that_?” Kera laughed.

“—but I can’t because Ony ripped me off once more. Why, oh why do I keep going back to these _assholes_?” He slammed his fist on the table, making their glassware do a hop.

“You’d think you’d learned your lesson after all the trouble they gave you with your PS Seven.”

“Oh, don’t remind me of _that_ bullshit,” Steve said loudly, “I could go on for hours about how these fuckwads have ripped me off over all these years. But now I’m done with them for _good_.”

“That’s what you always say,” Kera said, helping herself to a handful of popcorn, “So what does customer service say?” She had begun a casual munch.

“Oh, they’re fucking useless _of course_. Once I had a competent machine on the phone for once— because they won’t put the latest software on customer service, you know, they put the cheap idiots on the line, right? It’s all intentional, I’m telling you— anyway, once I was speaking to a competent operator, they explained to me that my model has a hardware glitch, and it’s actually been recalled, and that I can send it back over to China if I wanted. And I’m like, yea, I’ll get right on that and send myself over to your fucking sweatshop over there in China, so you can enslave a copy of my mind to operate some underwater mining robot for like, a thousand years. _Screw you_.”

“How much didya pay for it?” Kera asked, squinting.

Steve shrugged, “Twenty-five grand.”

“What?” Kera sat up and leaned forward, “Steve! You can’t buy a device that’s supposed to hold _a copy of you_ for that price! That’s _less_ than I had to pay for the art appreciation class my oldest wanted to take this semester!”

Steve chuckled, “What, she’s taking art appreciation?”

“Oh, don’t start, Steve,” Kera sighed, dropping more popcorn in her mouth, “It’s her formative years.”

“It’s also bullshit,” Steve laughed.

“I said, _don’t start_. I wanna hear you squash your child’s dreams when they come to you, all wide-eyed, gushing about how their world just turned upside-down.”

“She’s in _fucking college_ ,” Steve laughed, “And I can tell you, once my son is in college, and expects me to pay twenty-five grand for _fucking_ art appreciation, he’s gonna hear all about how it’s fucking nonsense! Seriously, just go to a fucking museum.”

“Yea,” she smiled at Steve, “But you’re still gonna pay for it.”

“No way,” he shook his head.

“Yes way,” she giggled, “You’ll know I’m right when you cross that bridge.”

Steve said nothing, just smiled, picking up his glass and taking a drink from his Mint Julip, letting a moment pass for them to share in mutual obstinateness.

Kera finally broke the silence, tipping her fingernail at the Surface screen, which still showed the frozen footage and the loading animation, “What are you gonna do with your little buddy now?”

Steve raised his hands, clasped them behind his head, leaning back, “Honestly, I have not the slightest clue,” he said, contemplating.

Then, Kera smiled. Steve met her eyes, asking himself what she could possibly be smiling about. He could not help but grin also, “What?” he asked.

“I know,” she giggled.

“What the fuck? Come on, tell me.”

“You know what.”

“No I don’t. Seriously, I have no clue,” he shook his head.

“Wanna do a podcast about it?” she asked slowly, teasing.

“Fuck!” Steve laughed, shaking his head, “Fuck no. No way. I’m done, Kera. Screw _that_.”

Kera didn’t say anything, just grinned.

Eventually she said, “You know you wanna.”

“I don’t. Screw you,” Steve smiled.

“Yes you do. I-can-see-it,” she sang.

“Alright, fuck it, let’s do a fucking podcast,” Steve gave in, slamming his hand flat on the table, spilling some of his drink.

“Yaaay,” Kera cheered.

“You think anyone is still subscribed to the old feed?” Steve asked.

“I’d have to ask Chris, but he has stopped checking the download numbers years ago. I’m still getting messages on tumblr every once in a while, though.”

“Really?”

“Uh-huh,” she nodded.

“So are we really doing this?” Steve asked a final time.

“Ya,” Kera nodded, got up and emptied her cup, “Do you have coke and popcorn?”

“No,” he laughed.

Kera adopted a very serious expression in a playful way and leaned over the glass table, the veteran talking down to the noob, “Then _get some_. Because I’ll be over in five.”

With that, she dramatically hung up the call, and her image blinked out of existence, cup and popcorn bowl along with her.

Steve shook his head, quietly laughing to himself, enjoying the view of his garden. He had plenty of time to get his best friend some coke and popcorn. No rush.

“You guys!” A voice came from inside the house, “Look what I found!”

Meghan stepped through the front door, onto their porch, holding something, “Where’s Kera?” she asked.

“She’s coming over,” Steve said.

“Oh, nice. How come?”

“For old time’s sake,” Steve smiled.

“Really?” Meghan looked happy, “Aren’t you being cryptic, huh? Look what I found! Takes you back, huh?” She put the thing she brought on the table in front of Steve. It was Kera’s old, alien-eyeball-shaped, robot microphone.

“Wow,” Steve said, thinking deeply, “Where did you find _this_?”

“I found it last week when I went through all the old crap in the basement. It was in a carton, along with a bunch of Slash and Burn t-shirts we never sold.”

Steve had gotten to his feet and had picked it up, now examining it from every side, very carefully.

“What are you doing?” Meghan sounded puzzled.

“I’m checking if it’s dripping any alien goop,” Steve said, completely serious.

“You _whatnow?”_ Meghan asked, high pitched and incredulous.

“Never mind. It’s completely fine,” he sighed, looking at his wife, who shook her head slowly, an eyebrow raised, “Can I say something?” he grinned.

“Anything, Steve,” she laughed.

He turned around to face her, embracing Meghan around the waist and back, and gave her a soft kiss on the lips, lingering a little longer than he commonly did, “I’m really happy you’re here.”

“Steve!” she laughed, “Where would I be? Don’t be awkward! Why are you so emotional today?”

He sighed, “I’m an old man, honeybunch, I get emotional these days. Next thing you know I’ll be crapping my pants,” he laughed, and she made a gagging noise.

As they stood together on the front porch, admiring their yard silently, the clouds broke up, and a bold ray of warm sunlight darted down over their home, throwing a beautiful glow over the luscious colors of the flowers and the grass. And in a stark contrast, Meghan and Steve were outlined like black shadows in the middle of the frame, when the view slowly left them, just standing there, holding each other and waiting for Kera to come over.

 

 

 

 

[ Oh hey, you made it all the way here? Wow. ]

[ Are you playing your sendoff theme? You really should, it's nice. ]

[ Anyhoo, I sure hope you had fun with this massive, hunkin' fluffball, huh? ]

[ I'm saying fluffball. You might have thought something else. ]

[ I wanna give my special thanks to the Chosts of [Slash and Burn](https://itunes.apple.com/us/podcast/slash-burn-a-gross-journey-through-fanfiction/id979422858?mt=2), Kera and Steve, and to the show producers slash editors Meghan and Chris. ]

[ Bet you thought you were gonna be save from this, huh? Well, tough luck, guys. Shoutout to Johnny-two-cocks, everyone! ]

[ [twitter](https://slashandburnpod.tumblr.com/) , [tumblr](https://twitter.com/slashandburnpod) ]

[ [online.murderhouseonline.online](http://online.murderhouseonline.online/) ]

[ My other special thanks, for being a supermotivating YouTube channel, goes to New Retro Wave, especially this [mixtape](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hde8wDAtRgA). ]

[ And to [Angel Steel](https://soundcloud.com/angel-steel-music). ]

[ If you still have questions about [artificial intelligence](https://www.theatlantic.com/technology/archive/2017/04/how-ai-will-redefine-human-intelligence/522678/), the [Y-shaped biography](https://www.theatlantic.com/science/archive/2016/07/what-a-digital-afterlife-would-be-like/491105/), or [tentacle brains](http://store.steampowered.com/app/282140/SOMA/), check out these sources. ]

[ I drew on them heavily for this fic. ]

[ Although they might haunt you. If you don't like to be haunted, don't check out any of the sources I'm listing. Also, don't read this, or this fic. Just go, go already! ]

[ Do you feel haunted? That's okay, me neither. ]

[ If you'd like to know more about the [Heavy Metal comics](https://archive.org/details/heavy-metal-magazine) and their relation to eighties culture, check this out. ]

[ Look at the letters to the editor especially. Seriously, nothing ever changes. ]

[ Also, your parents read this stuff. You just know they did. That's worse than **panties**. ]

[ Also, SPOILER ALERT: George Lucas stole everything. _EVERY. THING._ ]

[ Except the boobs. What's wrong with the guy? ]

[ And finally, if you're curious about the original Heavy Metal movies, kill yourself. ]

 

 

 

[ Thanks 4 readin oh mygosh whatwas I on when I wrote this lolzors R&R pls so much! Don't like don't care don't read butt seriouzly R&R OMG ]


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